Study and development of space eletronic systems

Jan 14, 2022

Green light for the latest developments of the PLATO mission

ESA's PLATO mission has been given the green light to continue its development after a successful critical review on January 11, 2022. PLATO, or PLANetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, is the third medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision program. Its objective is to find and study a large number of planetary systems, with a focus on the properties of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around solar-type stars.

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Nov 13, 2020

The European Space Agency adopts Ariel mission: Irfu is the project manager of AIRS instrument

ESA has adopted Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey), the 4th medium-class space mission of its Cosmic Vision program. Ariel is expected to be launched in 2029 by Ariane 6 from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. The French team, composed of CNES, CEA and CNRS, has taken charge of the design, production and delivery of the AIRS spectrometer. Pierre Olivier Lagage, astrophysicist at Irfu, is one of the 2 co-PI for the ARIEL consortium; the other co-PI is Jean-Philippe Beaulieu from IAP.

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The European Space Agency adopts Ariel mission: Irfu is the project manager of AIRS instrument

Nov 07, 2018

MXT: Delivery of the camera Structural and Thermal Model

A prototype of the MXT camera arrived at the CNES in Toulouse on 25 October 2018. This is the Structural and Thermal Model (STM), which will be integrated into the telescope that will be sent to China to be mounted on the SVOM satellite Qualification Model. The objective of this model is to validate the thermo-mechanical design of the camera. It also makes it possible to check the manufacturing and assembly capacity of the various components, which represent more than 1,000 elements.

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Sep 26, 2018

MXT camera first light

X-ray photons were detected for the first time in late August 2018 with an engineering model of the SVOM MXT focal plane. This is an important step towards the validation of the design of the detection chain. The MXT telescope, for Microchannel X-ray Telescope, will be flown on board the SVOM satellite, a collaborative project between France (CNES) and China (CAS, CNSA) to study gamma-ray bursts. It aims at detecting soft X-rays (0.

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Apr 16, 2017

A 800 000 m3 balloon to pierce the dust of the Galaxy

The PILOT astrophysics experiment has been launched the 17th April under a stratospheric balloon from Alice Springs in central Australia. The aim is to observe the polarization of the emission of dust particles present in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy and the nearby galaxies. With a mass of nearly one ton, PILOT [1] uses the biggest balloons launched by the National Center for Space Studies (CNES).

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Division of Electronics, Detectors and Computing for Physics (DEDIP)

Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe