Astrophysics

COBE

Completed

Image: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Launched: 18 Nov 198914:34:00 UTC
Last contact: 23 Dec 1993
Duration: 4 years 1 month
Destinations: Low Earth orbit

The Cosmic Background Explorer, which measured the faint glow left over from the Big Bang and showed it has an almost perfect black-body spectrum with tiny temperature variations. The work earned the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Milestones

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1990199119921993

Spacecraft

COBE

Telescope

Completed

Satellite with three instruments behind a conical sunshade, two of them cooled by liquid helium.

Launch mass: 2,206 kg
Size: 4.9 m × 2.2 m, span 8.4 m
Power: Solar
Built by: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Last contact: 23 Dec 1993
Designator: 1989-089A

Mission details from science.nasa.gov.