This computer drawing shows MAP leaving the Sun, Earth and Moon behind as it heads towards the L2 Lagrange point 1.5 million kilometers beyond Earth.
Click on image for full size
Courtesy of the MAP Science Team, NASA

Related links:

Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) homepage

Capturing the Afterglow of the Big Bang
News story originally written on June 25, 2001

After the Big Bang, the universe was really hot! The leftover heat from that time is still around today. It is called Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB).

CMB radiation is everywhere! It is in front of your computer screen, under your chair, past Pluto and all over the universe!

NASA is going to launch a probe to map this CMB radiation on June 30, 2001. The probe is called the MAP (Microwave Anisotropy Probe). The map it creates will help scientists answer questions like these: What happened right after the Big Bang? How were galaxies formed? What is the shape of the universe?

The MAP probe will make its CMB radiation map from the L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. It will take MAP 3 months to get that far out in space. Then MAP will take about 18 months to finish a map of the CMB radiation across the universe.

Last modified June 25, 2001 by Jennifer Bergman.

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