* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Planck satellite

Blobrana · L

The Planck telescope is studying radiation that's 13 billion years old
A space telescope that was launched in May has already begun to collect light left over from the Big Bang that created the universe.
The European Space Agency's Planck space telescope, which lifted off from a spaceport in French Guiana, began collecting scientific data on Thursday. If all goes as planned, the telescope will operate for at least the next 15 months.

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Blobrana · L

Planck: Understanding the origins of the Universe

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The path of Planck to its operational orbit around the second Lagrangian point in space

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Planck has now officially passed its "In-Orbit Commissioning Review", which marks the official end of the "Commissioning Phase" of the mission. The satellite operations, such as thrusters and communication, have been proven to work fine. Both instruments are on and working, and HFI is at its base temperature of 0.1K (-273.15°C) - making it the coldest (known) place in space!
All the cryogenic systems working fine, and the in its correct orbit around the L2 point, around 1,500,000 km (about 1,000,000 miles) from Earth.

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Blobrana · L

Planck has arrived at its destination
The ESA space observatory is in orbit around the L2 point, where it will spend two years listening to the echo of the Big Bang

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Blobrana · L

Europe's Planck observatory has reached its operating temperature, making it the coldest object in space.
The observatory's detectors have been chilled to a staggering minus 273.05C - just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term "absolute zero."
Launched in May, Planck will survey the "oldest light" in the Universe.

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Blobrana · L

Last night, the detectors of Planck's High Frequency Instrument reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273.05°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The spacecraft has also just entered its final orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2.
Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230°C by radiating heat into space. Three active coolers take over from there, and bring the temperature down further to an amazing low of -273.05°C, only 0.1°C above absolute zero - the coldest temperature theoretically possible in our Universe.

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Blobrana · L

Two more of Planck's temperature stages have reached their target temperatures. The 4K and 1.6K temperature stages have done this in line with ground tests. Now these stages are colder, the cooling of the HFI detectors to 0.1K will progress even faster. read more

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Blobrana · L

The final leg of Planck's journey has begun. On 17th June it successfully executed a 3-hour "touch-up" manoeuvre, which completes the mid-course correction. A couple of weeks previously, a much larger 46-hour burn was performed. This touch-up manoeuvre simply corrects for any slight misalignment after that burn. These misalignments are inevitable, and indeed expected, with such complicated procedures, and are primarily caused by tiny variations in the way the thrusters work.
As with the previous burn, Planck's course corrections are complicated affairs. Because it's spinning at 1rpm, the thrusters can only fire for short bursts once every minute - the rest of the time they're pointing in the wrong direction.

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Blobrana · L

A JPL-developed and -built cooler on the Planck spacecraft has chilled the mission's low-frequency instrument down to its operating temperature of a frosty 20 Kelvin (minus 424 degrees Fahrenheit). The so-called hydrogen sorption cooler was turned on June 4 and achieved the target temperature of 20 Kelvin eight days later. The cooler is part of a chain of coolers that works together to ultimately chill the high-frequency instrument down to 0.1 Kelvin -- an event scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

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