Other selections include Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyager's grand tour of the outer solar system, the Hubble Space Telescope's and
Cosmic Background Explorer's study of the farthest reaches of the universe, Magellan's examination of Venus, and Galileo's exposure of Jupiter and its moons.
Equipped with a 1.5 m telescope, Planck is intended to have an orbital life of 18 months and is expected to offer a magnitude greater sensitivity than NASA'S
Cosmic Background Explorer that was launched during the late 1980s.
The scientific promise of space exploration reached maturity with the results from Hubble, the
Cosmic Background Explorer, Hipparcos, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and their siblings.
Similarly, when I first heard about the stunning success of the COBE (
Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite in finding the anisotropy, or tipples in time, which indicated that the cosmos was still twitching from the initial effects of the big bang as predicted by inflationary theory, it can be earnestly said that most of us were ignorant of what it was all about.
Following the activities is information for obtaining a 35 mm slide set with descriptions showing current results from NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the
Cosmic Background Explorer. The guide concludes with a glossary, reference list, a NASA Resources list, and an evaluation card.
Nobel laureate John Mather (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center), who worked on the
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite that revolutionized CMB science in the early 1990s, says the detection of B-modes would be "tremendously important" but that the signal's absence would also be progress.
In 1992, the
Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, or COBE, confirmed a key part of Guth's idea by measuring slight fluctuations in the leftover heat from the Big Bang.
WMAP was designed to provide a more detailed look at subtle temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background that were first detected in 1992 by NASA's
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE).
In 1989 NASA launched the
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite to see if the cosmic microwave background indeed showed the slight differences in temperature that models of such a lumpy early universe predicted.
In January 1990, John Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center got a standing ovation from colleagues when he unveiled data from NASA's
Cosmic Background Explorer satellite showing that the radiation left over from the Big Bang perfectly matched that of a blackbody with a temperature of 2.72 kelvins, as had been predicted.