This episode of Astronomy Cast is brought to you by Swinburn Astronomy Online, the world's longest running online astronomy degree program.

Visit astronomy.swin.edu.au for more information.

Astronomy Cast Episode 219 from Monday, February 7, 2011, the Plank Mission.

Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.

My name is Fraser Cain, I'm the publisher of University and with me is Dr. Pamela Gaia Professor at Southern Illinois University, Everett's Film.

Hi Pamela, how are you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you doing Fraser?

I am doing really well.

That's it, that's all I got to say about that.

But I can't wait to talk about Plank, so let's move right on.

Another mission named after a famous physicist.

Last week we talked about Max Plank, this time we're going to talk about the Plank Mission.

Designed to study the cosmic microwave background radiation across the entire sky.

Like the previous WMAP mission, this will help astronomers understand the first moments after the Big Bang.

Plank.

Plank wasn't its original name, was it?

Well, so none of these missions really start with whatever the published name that you hear is.

So Plank started with the rather horrid name of COB-R-A-S-S-A-M-B-A or Cobra's Slash Samba,

which might make a good music genre, but it's a bit complicated to say for a mission rather.

Right, but if you were keeping your eye on the Cobra Samba mission, it's had its name changed.

Exactly.

Right, and so what was Plank's goal, its purpose?

...