CNES’s PILOT telescope completes first successful balloon flight over Canada
- Lâcher de la nacelle PILOT / Launch of the PILOT probe
- Copyright : © CNES/GRIMAULT Emmanuel, 2015
PILOT is a project developed by CNES in partnership with the IRAP astrophysics and planetology research institute and the IAS space astrophysics institute at CNRS, the French national scientific research centre, the University Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, the University Paris Sud 11 and CEA, the French atomic energy and alternative energies commission, with contributions from the Universities of Cardiff and La Sapienza in Rome.
On Monday, September 21, 2015, CNES’s PILOT project accomplished its mission in the skies above Timmins in Canada. Its payload was able to measure submillimetre polarized emission from the dust that fills our galaxy, the Milky Way, in order to map its magnetic field and study its role in the cycle of matter from dust clouds to the formation of stars and planets.
These measurements will also be valuable for subtracting galactic contributions in future studies of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).
- Lâcher de la nacelle PILOT / Launch of the PILOT probe
- Copyright : © CNES/GRIMAULT Emmanuel, 2015
- Lâcher de la nacelle PILOT / Launch of the PILOT probe
- Copyright : © CNES/GRIMAULT Emmanuel, 2015
For more information on the PILOT project: