Even good missions eventually die.
COBE was born more than 25 years ago, and despite a troubled childhood when it was passed from a Shuttle to an Atlas launch vehicle, it managed to arrive at adulthood soon after launch on November, 1989. Its parents will tell you of how proud they were, and how with tears in their eyes and the hopes for success in the future, they watched as COBE left its cradel and embarked on a fleeting 4-year adulthood. COBE was the prodigal son, always keeping in constant contact with its parents, and only occasionally asking for more money to continue its mission. Many people benefited greatly from COBE's detailed descriptions of what new world it was seeing so far from home. But COBE's speach was a peculiar one, in a strange dialect, and so a small army of skilled interpreters had to be assembled to translate what COBE was saying into normal language.
Sadly, after four years, COBE's parents stopped listening to their adult child, and slowly began to turn towards other interests as first one malady, then another began to afflict COBE. First, after only 41 weeks as an adult, COBE was blinded and lost all 10 of its eyes. Then, a short time later, it experienced its last stroke. Finally, but with some of its faculties still intact, the remaining parents decided that after 4 years of intensive care, it had reached the point of diminishing returns, and so they stopped listening to it at all.
But recordings had been made of COBE's complete utterances, and these were so complicated that a diminishing but dedicated army of doctors still tried to extract meaning from what they had received from the deceased. Two more years of work supported by an extended NASA COBE mission timeline, changed the lives of many people left behind after the wake for COBE.
The COBE Cosmology Data Analysis Center was disbanded and moved from its former location a block from the Goddard Space Flight Center. Many computer scientists and astronomers left COBE at that time and found employment working for other NASA missions, or left science entirely in search of new careers in teaching and computer graphics. The 'CDAC' offices reverted to ownership by the Health-Plus HMO for use in processing health claims...many submitted by the CDAC scientists for cases of exhaustion and insomnia. COBE research was transfered to a set of three offices and cubicles in Building 21, replacing the IUE satellite office suite. Of the more than 70 scientists and support engineers and technicians, only a dozen remained during the extended mission. DIRBE and FIRAS astronomers worked long hours to complete crucil research papers, improve the analysis techniques to squeeze the last byte of information out of the data, and to prepare the entire COBE data set for permanent public archiving at the National Space Science Data Center across the road in Building 26.
But on September 31, at 5:00 PM, even these activities came to an end. On Wednesday, October 1, pieces of the COBE computing facility and the COBE computer 'Cluster' of a dozen workstations and massive data archives, would be disconnected. The LAN would be deactivated, and the pieces would be shipped out to their new owners and scrubbed clean to start a new life in new satellite programs such as MAP. Other than the public archives, not a single trace of the workhorse nodes called Baffin, Stbart, Borneo or Julius would survive. To those of us who spent months and years using them, it would seem like the loss of a personal friend; a guide who had shown us the way through many trials and tribulations along the road to understanding the true meanings behind the COBE data.
Soon, a new staff will occupy these offices and tables. New file folders will hang from drawers that once contained glimpses of the Big Bang and our own galaxy seen in a new light. The trash cans we now fill with no longer needed writings about the data, will be emptied. Notes for what else could be done with COBE data will be tossed away like the countless empty cans of soda that we all consumed, and government-issue felt tipped pens we used by the box. There are always more papers you can write than time and resources ever permit, and this is one of the sad ironies of COBE. Those of us who had the greatest contact with its data will have to give up our tenure to a wider audience of investigators who have more resources available to them to continue where we had to leave off.
During the weeks before the End, there was a mad scramble by some of us to make certain that some portions of our research could be preserved on other computer systems. Gigabytes of data, program files and papers-in-waiting eventually found their homes on backup data tapes, CD-ROMS, or on the hard drives of PCs. Perhaps some of us will be able to complete a portion of what we had started using future funds from NASA. But this is not a guarantee.
A dinner party for the End of COBE was held at the University of Maryland, attracting about 50 people and their spouses. It was and awkward and poignant affair with many people conspicuously absent. Several speaches were given hailing COBE and the entire effort as one we can always be proud to have been a part of. It confirmed Big Bang theory in the most spectacular way imaginable, provided massive media exposure to astronomy, and has now become the highwater mark for any further discussion of cosmology in this century or the next. It is rare that a single astronomer can make such a contribution to the advancement of knowledge. COBE joins the ranks of many NASA and science programs where large groups of scientists must blend their egos and personal agendas together to acheive a common goal that is greater than any single one by an individual. This realization comes hard to many, especially the younger scientists who still crave and require individual recognition to advance their careers.
During the last days, there were four astronomers working on DIRBE, three working on FIRAS and only two working on DMR. The computer systems staff of five people were among the first to be reassigned to new computer support tasks by their company, Hughes STX. The DMR astronomers took up their new assignments on the MAP mission which is the successor to DME and uses many of the same hardware and software designs as DMR. For FIRAS and DIRBE astronomers, contract astronomers all, some were faced with painful choices for what to do next. Some had grant money from NASA to continue as astronomers, others would be leaving full-time astronomy for new careers among the Mission to Planet Earth satellite programs. As with past astronomers who parted ways with COBE when the CDAC was disbanded, they too must come to their own private terms with no longer having direct access with a field they have loved for over a decade since graduate school. But for other astronomers, this change can be a liberating one filled with new technologies, new problems, and new opportunities for growth.
For civil service COBE astronomers, and members of the COBE Science Working Group, astronomy is still an option, but even so, many of the original team members had long since ceased being active in COBE science, and gradually spent fewer and fewer hours per week working with COBE. New projects in astronomy awaited, and by the time COBE came to an end, only a few of the original team remained to actually turn off the lights and see to it that a final budget was submitted to NASA to account for the funds used.
Long ago, upon the death of my parents, I sold the family home. Gone now are the familiar nooks and crannies of a once bustling environment, the well-kept lawns, the secret hiding places, the familiar nicks and scratches left upon a wall when I was young. But on one dark and reflective day, I reached out and called that familiar number etched indellibly into my memory from childhood. 261-3946. The phone rang twice and a stranger answered. Last night, I dialed up my old COBE node at "stbart.gsfc.nasa.gov" but all I got was a whistful ....... I am sure I will do so again in a decade, and perhaps some long dead ghost of a time now passed will answer, and remind me how things used to be with COBE. And on that moment, overhead, COBE will be spinning around the Earth, silently gazing at the sky...watching...remembering.