Planck: Mission Status SummarySky coverage - Orbit - Milestones Last update: November 17, 2009. Planck is collecting high-quality science data, from its L2 orbit through its First Sky Survey, and it is currently scheduled to continuously acquire data until the end of 2010. At this point, all systems are functioning very well. Sky coverage Planck describes a Lissajous trajectory around L2, with a 6 months period that avoids crossing the Earth penumbra for at least 5 years, and it observes the sky by scanning nearly great circles on the celestial sphere, and periodically shifting the spin axis to remain anti-Sun throughout the year. The Figure bellow illustrates the status of the sky coverage on November 17 2009. This full sky Mollweide projection shows, in an ecliptic coordinates system, the overlap sky coverage from all Planck detectors since the beginning of the First Survey, which has started on August 13 2009. The displayed area corresponds to 60% of the sky. On the background, a WMAP image with the Galactic plane is shown for illustration purposes. Some Planck pointing data are already available for external observers.  Trajectory and orbit Planck was launched on May 14 2009, and has arrived at L2 on July 3 2009. The ephemerides for the Planck spacecraft are available via the HORIZONS system. The diagrams below show Planck's trajectory to L2, and its current and planned orbit. Each tick mark corresponds to two weeks. The coordinate system is an osculating, co-rotating Earth/Moon barycentre-Sun system: X axis along the Sun - Earth/Moon barycentre direction; Z axis along the angular momentum vector of the Earth/Moon barycentre movement around the Sun; Y axis completes the right hand system. The origin of the system is the Earth/Moon barycentre, thus, you find the Sun in -x direction. The figures are by R. Cramm, ESOC. 2009 trajectory and orbit  2010 orbit  Major achieved milestones | Date | Event |
|---|
| May 14 2009 | Planck is launched, on an Ariane 5 rocket from ESA's Spaceport in French Guiana, into its planned trajectory towards L2. | | July 3 2009 | Planck arrives at L2 and its payload and all the spacecraft subsystems work at nominal temperatures. | | August 13 2009 | Planck starts its First All Sky Survey after successfully concluding its commissioning phase. | | September 17 2009 | Planck yields promising results. Please, visit the first Planck post launch press release and more in depth. | | 2nd half of September 2009 | Planck observes the Crab Nebula, one of the brightest sky objects at the Planck frequencies, and an important source for checking its polarization calibration. | | 2nd half of October 2009 | Planck observes Mars and Jupiter. The observation of planets provide important data needed to characterize Planck's beams. | | 1st half of November 2009 | Planck observes Neptune. |
Major upcoming milestones | Date | Event |
|---|
| 1st half of December 2009 | Planck observes Uranus. | | December 2009 | Pre-release of Planck's internal archive for scientific explotation within the Planck collaboration. | | 1st half of January 2010 | Planck observes Saturn. | | February 2010 | First science release of Planck's internal archive for scientific explotation within the Planck collaboration. | | 1st half of March 2010 | Planck observes the Crab Nebula. | | 1st half of April 2010 | Planck observes Mars. | | April 2010 | Planck starts its Second All Sky Survey. | | 1st half of May 2010 | Planck observes Neptune. | | 1st half of June 2010 | Planck observes Saturn. | | 2nd half of June 2010 | Planck observes Uranus and Jupiter. | | June 2010 | Second science release of Planck's internal archive for scientific explotation within the Planck collaboration. | | December 2010 | An early all-sky catalogue of compact and point sources extracted from Planck's data is released to the scientific community. | | 2012 | Calibrated time-ordered data, full sky maps at each frequency, full sky component maps (CMB, and Galactic emission), and a final compact source catalog are made publicly available. |
|
 |
|
