Planck spacecraft Trivia Questions

Planck was a pure observatory, not a lander or rover; it had no asteroid mission component.

ESA's Planck mission honored Max Planck, whose work on blackbody radiation underpins the cosmic microwave background physics Planck studied.

Planck had superior angular resolution and sensitivity, revealing finer details in the CMB than WMAP could achieve.

Launched in 2009, Planck ran until 2013—more than twice its planned 15-month mission—thanks to efficient cryogen use.

Planck performed a lunar flyby on 19 May 2009 to adjust its trajectory, but it did not enter orbit around the Moon. It then traveled to the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point.

Its bolometers operated at 0.1 K via a series of coolers, including a dilution fridge, to detect faint CMB signals.

Planck used solar panels for power and passive cooling; no nuclear power source was aboard.

Planck refined the Hubble constant, but the faster expansion (Hubble tension) was later highlighted by other data, not Planck's direct discovery.