The Planck mission: scientific objectives and status

by Dr Cecile Renault (LPSC Grenoble)

Thursday 15 Apr 2010, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Brussels

E/3rd floor-E.361 - Meeting room (E.361) (Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve))

For 40 years, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) has been the most important source of information about the geometry and contents of the Universe. Even so, only a small fraction of the information available in the CMB has been extracted to date. Planck, the third space CMB mission after COBE and WMAP, is designed to extract essentially all of the information in the CMB temperature anisotropies. Planck will also measure to high accuracy the polarization of CMB anisotropies, which encodes not only a wealth of cosmological information but also provides a unique probe of the thermal history of the Universe during the time when the first stars and galaxies formed. Measurements may also detect the signature of a stochastic background of gravitational waves generated during inflation, 10−35 s after the Big-Bang. I will describe the expected scientific cosmological output of the Planck mission, the main instrumental features of the satellite and the status of the mission.

Slides Louvain_renault.ppt

Video Scan_Cut_Sor3.mov