Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)

▪ United States satellite

      a U.S. satellite launched in 2001 and designed to map irregularities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

      The CMB was discovered in 1964 when German-American physicist Arno Penzias (Penzias, Arno) and American astronomer Robert Wilson (Wilson, Robert Woodrow) determined that noise in a microwave receiver was in fact residual thermal radiation from the big bang (big-bang model). The thermal radiation started as light and has been red-shifted by the expansion of the universe to longer wavelengths where its radiation is that of a blackbody at a temperature of 2.728 Kelvin (K; −270.422 °C, or −454.76 °F). WMAP uses microwave radio receivers pointed in opposite directions to map the unevenness—anisotropy—of the background. WMAP is named in tribute to American physicist David Todd Wilkinson, who died in 2002 and who was a contributor to both WMAP and WMAP's predecessor, the Cosmic Background Explorer.

      WMAP was launched June 30, 2001, and was positioned near the second Lagrangian point (L2), a gravitational balance point between Earth and the Sun and 1.5 million km (0.9 million miles) opposite the Sun from Earth. The spacecraft moves in a controlled Lissajous pattern (Lissajous figure) around L2 rather than “hovering” there. This orbit isolates the spacecraft from radio emissions from Earth and the moon without having to place it on a more distant trajectory that would complicate tracking. WMAP was initially planned to operate for two years, but its mission has been extended to September 2009.

      The spacecraft carries a pair of microwave receivers that observe in nearly opposite directions through 1.4 × 1.6-metre (4.6 × 5.2-foot) reflecting telescopes (telescope). These reflectors resemble a home satellite “dish” antenna. The receivers measure the relative brightness of opposite points in the universe at frequencies of 23, 33, 41, 61, and 94 gigahertz and are cooled to eliminate internal noise. The spacecraft is protected from the Sun by a shield that is deployed with the solar arrays and is permanently pointed at the Sun. The spacecraft rotates so the two reflectors scan a circle across the sky. As WMAP orbits the Sun with the L2 point and Earth, the scanned circle precesses so that the entire sky is mapped every six months. When Jupiter passes through the field of view, it is used as a calibration source.

 Data from WMAP show temperature variations of 0.0002 K caused by intense sound waves echoing through the dense, early universe, about 380,000 years after the big bang. This anisotropy hints at density variations where matter would later coalesce into the stars (star) and galaxies (galaxy) that form today's universe. WMAP also measured the composition of the early, dense universe, showing that it started at 63 percent dark matter, 12 percent atoms (atom), 15 percent photons (photon), and 10 percent neutrinos (neutrino). As the universe expanded, the composition shifted to 23 percent dark matter and 4.6 percent atoms. The contribution of photons and neutrinos became negligible, while dark energy, a poorly understood field that accelerates the expansion of the universe, is now 72 percent of the content. Although neutrinos are now a negligible component of the universe, they form their own cosmic background, which was discovered by WMAP. WMAP also showed that the first stars in the universe formed half a billion years after the big bang. Scheduled for launch in 2009, the European Space Agency's Planck satellite is designed to map the CMB in even greater detail than WMAP.

Dave Dooling, Jr.

 

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