The PLANCK mission is the first European Space mission specifically designed to study the origin and evolution of the Universe. Through high accuracy analysis of the CMBR, PLANCK will study the Big Bang and the first steps in the formation of matter structures and of the Universe as we know it today.
Institute for Space Sciences contribution and involvement with PLANCK
- ISS has been a member of the PLANCK Consortium from the very beginning, and has been involved in all the preparatory stages of the mission, from selecting the mission’s science objectives to the development of its technical requirements and its synergy with ongoing and future missions.
- at the present time, the scientific involvement of ISS with the PLANCK Mission has the following objectives: (i) the study of the temperature variations and polarization of the CMBR and evaluation of the main cosmological parameters, (ii) the study of the standard cosmological models and of non-standard models of gravity, (iii) the study of inflation mechanisms as the source of the large-scale structure of the Universe and (iv) the study of the impact of elementary particle physics on cosmology (e.g. the measurement of the neutrino masses, analysis of the various Higgs mechanisms and processes, etc.)