EUR: Europe's 'Big Bang' space telescope off to heavenly start
Fri Sep 18 03:54:12 EST 2009
Thu Sep 17 17:54:12 UTC 2009
PARIS, Sept 18 AFP - A revolutionary space telescope designed to peek into the remnants of the Big Bang that created the universe has got off to a fine start, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
The Planck microwave observatory began scanning the skies on August 13 after a three-month period to commission its two instruments, the agency said.
"Both instruments have demonstrated excellent characteristics so far, fulfilling expectations from ground tests," it said.
Planck's first task was to conduct a two-week trial, the "First Light Survey," in which it made a map comprising strips of the sky in all of the energy frequencies covered by the two scanners.
"Preliminary analysis indicates that the quality of the data is excellent," ESA said.
"This bodes well for the full sky survey that has just begun."
Planck was hoisted by an Ariane 5 ECA on May 14 from ESA's base at Kourou, French Guiana, in a tandem launch with an infra-red telescope called Herschel.
It now orbits Earth at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres.
Costing around 700 million euros ($A1.18 billion), the 1.5-metre telescope carries two arrays of detectors designed to measure the temperature of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the relic energy of the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.
To achieve this feat, the detectors must be cooled by liquid helium to just above -273.15 degrees Celsius, also known as absolute zero, to prevent residual heat from ruining the observations.
The spacecraft has an operational life of 15 months, which is enough to survey the whole sky twice over, although a mission extension of one year is possible.
It is named after the 20th-century German physicist Max Planck, founder of the quantum theory.
