Planck Surveyor On Its Way to Orbit

Planck Surveyor On Its Way to Orbit

An Ariane 5 rocket carried the Planck Surveyor and a companion satellite into space May 14, 2009 from the European Space Agency (ESA) base on the northwest coast of South America. Once in orbit beyond the moon, Planck will produce the most accurate measurements ever made of the relic radiation from the big bang, plus the largest set of CMB data ever recorded. Berkeley Labs long and continuing involvement with Planck began when George Smoot of the Physics Division proposed Plancks progenitor to ESA and continues with preparations for ongoing data analysis for the U.S. Planck team at NERSC, led by Julian Borrill, co-leader of the Computational Cosmology Center