COBE


 * COBE **

**﻿CO**smic **B**ackground **E**xplorer Launch date: November 18, 1989 Launch vehicle: Delta 5920 Launch site: Vandenberg Air Force Base Mission Length: approximately 4 years Mass: 2270kg

The COBE satellite (also referred to as Explorer 66) was developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to measure the diffuse **infrared** and **microwave** radiation from the early universe to the limits. It carried 3 instruments.
 * __**Instrument **__ || __**Acronym **__ || __**Description **__ ||
 * Differential Microwave Radiometer || DMR || A microwave instrument that would map variations (or anisotropies) in the CMB ||
 * Far-InfaRed Absolute Spectrophotometer || FIRAS || A spectrophotometer used to measure the spectrum of the CMB ||
 * Diffuse InfraRed Background Experiment || <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">DIRBE || <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">A multiwavelength infared detector used to map dust emission ||

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) of the universe and provide measurements that would help shape our understanding of the universe.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">COBE provided evidence that supported the Big Bang theory of the universe: that the CMB was a near-perfect black-body **spectrum** and that it had very faint **anisotropies**.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two of COBE's principal investigators, George Smoot and John Mather, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for their work on the project. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science.”



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