COBE :: History

• 1965, CMB announced - Penzias & Wilson; Dicke, Peebles, Roll, & Wilkinson
• 1974, NASA AO for Explorers: ~ 150 proposals, including:
  - JPL anisotropy proposal (Gulkis, Janssen...) - Berkeley anisotropy proposal (Alvarez, Smoot...) - Goddard/MIT/Princeton COBE proposal (Hauser, Mather, Muehlner, Silverberg, Thaddeus, Weiss, Wilkinson)
• 1976, Mission Definition Science Team selected by HQ (Nancy Boggess, Program Scientist); PI's chosen
• ~1979, decision to build COBE in-house at GSFC
• 1982, approval to construct for flight
• 1986, Challenger explosion, start COBE redesign for Delta launch
• 1989, Nov. 18, launch
• 1990, first spectrum results; helium ends in 10 mo
• 1992, first anisotropy results
• 1994, end operations
• 1998, major cosmic IR background results