The press conference is organised by ESA and Alcatel Alenia Space (AAS), at the AAS facilities in Cannes, France, on 1 February, to mark the completion of the integration of Planck and to present its technological achievements and scientific objectives.

Planck will make the most accurate maps yet of the microwave background radiation that fills space. It will be sensitive to temperature variations of a few millionths of a degree and will map the full sky in nine wavelengths.

The immediate outcome of the Big Bang and the initial conditions for the evolution in the universe's structure are the primary target of this important mission. From the results, a great deal more will be learnt not only about the nature and amount of dark matter, the 'missing mass' of the universe, but also about the nature of dark energy and the expansion of the universe itself.

To address such challenging objectives, Planck will need to operate at very low, stable temperatures. Once in space, its detectors will have to be cooled to temperature levels close to absolute zero (-273.15C), ranging from -253C to only a few tenths of a degree above absolute zero. The Planck spacecraft thus has to be a marvel of cryotechnology.

After integration, Planck will start a series of tests that will continue into early-2008. It will be launched by end-July 2008 in a dual-launch configuration with Herschel, ESA's mission to study the formation of galaxies, stars and planetary systems in the infrared.

The Planck spacecraft was built by AAS Cannes, the prime contractor, leading a consortium of industrial partners with the AAS industry branch in Turin, Italy, responsible for the satellite's service module. ESA and the Danish National Space Centre (Copenhagen, Denmark) are responsible for the hardware provision of Planck's telescope mirrors, manufactured by EADS Astrium (Friedrichshafen, Germany).

AAS Cannes is also responsible for the payload module, the platform that hosts the telescope and the two onboard instruments, HFI and LFI. The instruments themselves are being supplied by a consortium of scientists and institutes led by the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale at Orsay (France) in the case of HFI, and by the Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica (IASF) in Bologna (Italy) in that of LFI.

There are also numerous subcontractors spread throughout Europe, with several more in the USA.

Related Links
Herschel overview
Planck overview
Understanding Time and Space