Last Command Sent to Planck Space Telescope

The Planck space telescope has been turned off after spending nearly 4.5 years soaking up the relic radiation from the Big Bang and studying the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the history of the universe.

The Planck space telescope has been turned off after spending nearly 4.5 years soaking up the relic radiation from the Big Bang and studying the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the history of the universe.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA.

Mission controllers at ESA’s operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, sent the final command to the Planck satellite October 23, marking the end of operations for what some like to call a “time machine.”

“We are only partway through the analysis of the data and have already learned a huge amount about the universe, from the Milky Way galaxy to the observable edge and beyond to the first tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang,” said U.S. Planck Project Scientist Charles Lawrence of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Launched in 2009, Planck was designed to tease out the faintest relic radiation from the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background. This radiation preserves a picture of the universe as it was about 380,000 years after its birth and provides details of the initial conditions that led to the universe of today.

Above is a map of the cosmic microwave background with an artist’s impression of Planck.

“Planck is a model for international cooperation in space. Both Europe and the U.S. contributed enabling new technologies, giving Planck unprecedented scientific capability,” said Ulf Israelsson, the U.S. Planck project manager at JPL.