New spacecraft starts taking early universe data

In summary: Planck's main goal is to study the early universe. Herschel will help with observations of the early universe.
  • #1
marcus
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Planck craft launched May 14 is now in position and is operating. ESA says it began taking scientific data yesterday June 14.

Going around the sun, about 1 million miles or 1.5 million km farther out than the Earth is.

http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=PLANCK&page=dev_news

Basically in position at the L2 lagrange point.


==quote==

15 June: the sorption cooler has achieved its nominal temperature. . The temperatures on the sorption cooler side of the interface is ~17.5 K. The third V-groove is at about 45 K. Record temperatures !

14 June: the LFI front-ends have been turned on and are behaving nominally, producing science data. This was the last major payload element remaining to be turned on. Planck is now fully alive !

11 June: the first excitement related to the payload: yesterday evening the sorption cooler unexpectedly turned itself off. The anomaly was quickly traced to a safety threshold which had been incorrectly set. It was updated and sorption cooler restarted within a few hours. The cool-down profile was hardly affected.

9 June 2009: the big manoeuver has been completed: ~155 m/s were expended over ~46 hrs. A very slight overperformance will be compensated with a touch-up manoeuver on 17 June. In the meantime, the payload is cooling down as planned: the Sorption Cooler cold-end is following very closely the cool-down profile which was achieved during ground testing (at CSL), and the HFI focal plane is also cooling down as predicted. It is expected now to achieve 20 K at the sorption cooler cold-end sometime during the weekend.

4 June 2009: both the sorption cooler and the LFI have been switched on, are healthy and doing what they are expected to do. Big smiles on everybody's faces ! Tomorrow: execution of the big manoeuver will start and will last around one day.

==endquote==
The point for cosmology is it will take an even closer look at the earliest light than WMAP did.
 
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  • #2
It's all very exciting, if Planck finds nothing unexpected it will be a huge boost for the LCDM model (we just then need to figure out why our Universe is so absurd), and if it finds something unexpected, well that's always interesting!

Planck by itself can't rule out things that look really really similar to LCDM but might actually be caused by very different physics, but the combination of Planck and future missions in planning (looking at other things, supernovae explosions, galaxy redshifts, galaxy clusters etc) should be able to. The next ten to twenty years will be a golden age in cosmology (not that the last ten years has been too shabby either).
 
  • #3
Planck, will more importantly, further probe CMB measurements. This will be huge for cosmology. I am pretty pumped about this.
 
  • #4
The ESA seems to be doing some really fantastic stuff with astrophysics probes lately.
 
  • #5
Coin said:
The ESA seems to be doing some really fantastic stuff with astrophysics probes lately.

Yes. There's also Herschel which was launched at the same time as Planck.
You may want to mention others.

I think Herschel is interesting for cosmology because able to study early structure. Early stars, galaxies, in the infrared. Large mirror.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16

3.5 meters. Perhaps the largest telescope mirror ever put into space. Should be able to study structures in the process of formation.
 
  • #6
How exciting, i hope there is load of good data coming through.
 

1. How will the new spacecraft collect early universe data?

The new spacecraft will use advanced technology such as telescopes and detectors to observe and record radiation from the early universe.

2. What makes this new spacecraft different from previous ones?

This new spacecraft has improved capabilities and technology that allows it to collect more accurate and detailed data from the early universe.

3. What can we learn from the early universe data collected by this spacecraft?

By analyzing the data collected by this spacecraft, scientists can gain a better understanding of the origins and evolution of the universe, including the formation of galaxies and the distribution of matter and energy.

4. How long will it take for the spacecraft to collect enough data from the early universe?

The duration of data collection will depend on the specific mission and objectives of the spacecraft, but it is expected to take several years to gather enough data to make significant discoveries about the early universe.

5. How will the data collected by the spacecraft be used and shared?

The data collected by the spacecraft will be analyzed by scientists and shared with the scientific community to further our understanding of the early universe. It may also be made publicly available for educational and outreach purposes.

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