Follow-on Missions and Future Measurements
The original timeline for WMAP gave it two years of observations; these were completed by September 2003. Mission extensions were granted in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 giving the spacecraft a total of 9 observing years, which ended August 2010 and in October 2010 the spacecraft was moved to a special graveyard orbit outside of L2, in which it orbits the sun 14 times every 15 years.
The Planck spacecraft, launched on the May 14, 2009, also measures the CMB and aims to refine the measurements made by WMAP, both in total intensity and polarization. Various ground- and balloon-based instruments have also made CMB contributions, and others are being constructed to do so. Many are aimed at searching for the B-mode polarization expected from the simplest models of inflation, including EBEX, Spider, BICEP2, Keck, QUIET, CLASS, SPTpol and others.
Read more about this topic: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
Famous quotes containing the words missions and/or future:
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