The launch of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, aboard a Delta II rocket is scheduled for Friday, Dec. 11, between 6:09 a.m. and 6:23 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

NASA will provide television and Internet coverage of prelaunch activities and liftoff of the agency's latest space science mission.

After launch, WISE will scan the entire sky in infrared light with a sensitivity hundreds of times greater than ever before, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images.

The mission will uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets.

A prelaunch news conference will be held Dec. 9 at 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) at the NASA Vandenberg Resident Office and broadcast on NASA Television.