COBE

19893 instrumentsNASA

LocationSpace

Year1989

Size3 instruments

OperatorNASA

About COBE

The Cosmic Background Explorer. Showed that the cosmic microwave background has the spectrum of a perfect blackbody. Found the tiny temperature ripples that grew into all structure in the universe. The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics honored its principal investigators. The starting point of precision cosmology.

Related Observatories

Chandra X-ray Observatory

19991.2 m mirrorNASA

The most powerful X-ray telescope in space. Orbits 139,000 km above Earth. Discovered that the unive...

Spitzer Space Telescope

20030.85 m mirrorNASA

An infrared space telescope that discovered the TRAPPIST-1 system of 7 Earth-sized planets. Operated...

WMAP

20011.4 m mirrors (2)NASA

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Pinned down the age of the universe to 13.77 billion years...

TESS

20184 camerasNASA

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Has discovered over 7,000 exoplanet candidates. Surveys t...