WMAP Hard at Work

  • Released Tuesday, July 3, 2007
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Scientists using NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anistropy Probe (WMAP) have created the most detailed portrait of the infant Universe. By capturing the afterglow of the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background (CMB), we now believe the Universe to be 13.7 billion years old. Encoded in these patterns is much-anticipated information about the fundamental properties of the early Universe. WMAP launched on June 30, 2001.

This animation shows the WMAP spacecraft spinning, then reveals the data that it collected.

For More Information

See http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov

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NASA

This page was originally published on Tuesday, July 3, 2007.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:55 PM EDT.

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