About the project
PICO is a CMB polarization satellite experiment proposed as one of NASAs that will scan the sky for 5 years using 21 frequency bands from 21 to 799 GHz. The sensitivity of PICO is equivalent to between 3300 and 6400 Planck missions.
Objectives
The key science goal is to measure or constrain large-scale primordial gravitational waves and B-modes in the CMB down to a tensor-to-scalar ratio \(r=5 * 10^{-4} \). This is 100 times lower than the current upper limit, constraining theories of inflation in the early universe.
PICO also has several other scientific objectives, for instance to detect or strongly constrain the neutrino masses, constrain deviations from the standard model of particle physics, measure the optical depth of reionization and several more.
Cooperation
PICO is a NASA funded project lead by the University of Minnesota/Twin Cities.