ESA’s Steve Foley, the Spacecraft Operations Manager for Planck at ESOC, sent this in on Saturday, 19 October.

We marked the end of Planck science this morning with the switch-off of the Sorption Cooler and the two instruments. The operation took less than one hour and the simplicity of the final act belies the significance of the event.

LFI was the first to be commanded off. The final packet from the instrument was generated at 2013.292.06.45.56 UTC (19 Oct 08:45:56 CEST).

The Sorption Cooler was commanded off by one of the principle manufacturers of the cooler, Robert Bowman from NASA/JPL. The occasion was marked with several photos by his JPL colleague Dave Pearson who has been involved with the cooler for more than a decade. The final SCS packet was generated at 2013.292.06.56.16 UTC (19 Oct 08:56:16 CEST).

SREM was commanded off at 2013.292.07.05.35 UTC (19 Oct 08:05:35 CEST) .

HFI was commanded off starting at 07:15 UTC (09:15 CEST). The isotope tanks were re-opened at 2013.292.07.16.26 (19 Oct 09:16:26 CEST).

The instrument was finally commanded off by the HFI engineer Bruno Gandolfo, who was there at launch and responsible for the instrument activation in the first hours of the mission. The very last payload packet was generated at 2013.292.07.38.44 (19 Oct 09:38:44 CEST).

With regards,

– Steve