NASA to Hold News Teleconference to Discuss Planck Cosmology Findings (Update)

WASHINGTON - NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT, Thursday, March 21, to discuss the first cosmology results from Planck, a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation.

Planck launched into space in 2009 and has been scanning the skies ever since, mapping cosmic microwave background, or the afterglow, of the theoretical big bang that created the universe more than 13 billion years ago. NASA contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments, and U.S., European and Canadian scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

The teleconference participants are:

-- Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics, NASA, Washington
-- Charles Lawrence, U.S. Planck project scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.
-- Martin White, U.S. Planck scientist, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., and Faculty Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
-- Krzysztof Gorski, U.S. Planck scientist, JPL
-- Marc Kamionkowski, professor of physics and astronomy, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.

This event previously was scheduled as a televised news conference.

For teleconference dial-in information, media representatives should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington at j.d.harrington@nasa.gov by 10 a.m., March 21. Media representatives and the public can also send questions via Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

Visuals will be posted at the start of the teleconference on NASA’s Planck website:

http://www.nasa.gov/planck

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA’s website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

The event will also be streamed live on Ustream at:

http://www.ustream/tv/nasajpl2

For additional information about Planck, visit:

http://www.esa.int/planck