In January 2012, the HFI exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant needed to maintain such cold temperatures. The LFI, meanwhile, had enough coolant to keep making observations until Oct. 3, 2013.
When Planck's mission began winding down in August, the satellite was pushed away from its operational orbit around the Lagrange Point 2 (L2) — a place where the gravity of Earth and the sun roughly balance out — to a long-term orbit around the sun. In the last few weeks, the spacecraft was prepped for hibernation and used up all of its remaining fuel before its transmitter was finally switched off.
Planck was launched with a sibling spacecraft, the Herschel telescope, which ceased scientific work in April and was turned off on June 17.
Though the telescope has been powered down, the wealth of data it collected will be scrutinized by scientists for years to come, mission scientists said.
"Planck has given us a fresh look at the matter that makes up our universe and how it evolved," project scientist Jan Tauber said in a statement, "but we are still working hard to further constrain our understanding of how the universe expanded from the infinitely small to the extraordinarily large, details which we hope to share next year."
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