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Planck satellite

Planck
Front view of the European Space Agency Planck satellite.jpg
Artist's impression of the Planck spacecraft
Names COBRAS/SAMBA
Mission type Space telescope
Operator ESA
COSPAR ID 2009-026B
SATCAT no. 34938
Website http://www.esa.int/planck
Mission duration Planned: >15 months
Final: 4 years, 5 months, 8 days
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer Thales Alenia Space
Launch mass 1,950 kg (4,300 lb)
Payload mass 205 kg (452 lb)
Dimensions Body: 4.20 m × 4.22 m (13.8 ft × 13.8 ft)
Start of mission
Launch date 14 May 2009, 13:12:02 (2009-05-14UTC13:12:02) UTC
Rocket Ariane 5 ECA
Launch site Guiana Space Centre,
French Guiana
Contractor Arianespace
Entered service 3 July 2009
End of mission
Disposal Decommissioned
Deactivated 23 October 2013, 12:10:27 (2013-10-23UTC12:10:28) UTC
Orbital parameters
Reference system L2 point
(1,500,000 km / 930,000 mi)
Regime Lissajous
Main telescope
Type Gregorian
Diameter 1.9 m × 1.5 m (6.2 ft × 4.9 ft)
Wavelengths 27 GHz to 1 THz

Planck insignia
ESA astrophysics insignia for the Planck mission

← Herschel

Planck insignia
ESA astrophysics insignia for the Planck mission

Planck was a space observatory operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2009 to 2013, which mapped the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at microwave and infra-red frequencies, with high sensitivity and small angular resolution. The mission substantially improved upon observations made by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Planck provided a major source of information relevant to several cosmological and astrophysical issues, such as testing theories of the early Universe and the origin of cosmic structure; as of 2013 it has provided the most accurate measurements of several key cosmological parameters, including the average density of ordinary matter and dark matter in the Universe.

The project was started around 1996 and was initially called COBRAS/SAMBA: the Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy Satellite/Satellite for Measurement of Background Anisotropies. It was later renamed in honour of the German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947), who derived the formula for black-body radiation.

Built at the Cannes Mandelieu Space Center by Thales Alenia Space, and created as a medium-sized mission for ESA's Horizon 2000 long-term scientific programme, Planck was launched in May 2009, reaching the Earth/Sun L2 point by July, and by February 2010 had successfully started a second all-sky survey. On 21 March 2013, the mission's first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background was released, with an expanded release including polarization data in February 2015.


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