Equipments

PLANETIPAG

The IPAG Extraterrestrial Materials Analysis Platform (PLANETIPAG) brings together the tools and know-how intended for the preparation, synthesis, chemical and optical analysis and characterization of extraterrestrial samples or analogues.

It meets the experimental and analytical needs of the Planéto and Spectre teams at IPAG. The research carried out by these teams covers a vast field encompassing the study of the planets, comets and meteorites of the solar system as well as the formation and evolution of matter (gaseous and solid) from the interstellar medium to the planets. It is based on in-situ observations and measurements of space probes launched in particular by the European (ESA), American (NASA) and Japanese (JAXA) space agencies. With the support of CNES, the researchers of the laboratory were or are involved in the preparation, the operation, and the interpretation of the measurements carried out by missions such as Cassini-Huygens towards Saturn, JUICE towards Jupiter, ROSETTA and Hayabusa-2 towards small bodies, Exomars, Mars Sample Return and MMX towards the red planet, New Horizons towards Pluto, etc.

Although mostly used for IPAG scientific projects, this platform is accessible to the laboratories of the Observatory of Sciences of the Universe of Grenoble (OSUG), to the laboratories of INSU and occasionally to external services via the mass spectrometry platform of the ICMG. It is also involved in the French Geochemical and Experimental Network (REGEF) set up by INSU (CNRS). Several instruments are also European facilities within the framework of the ’Trans-National Access’ activity of the European program Europlanet (https://www.europlanet-society.org).

Others infrastructures

– an integration hall (class 100000) of 122m² equipped with a bridge crane (5T) and a dock (2T),
– a workshop for mechanical work,
– a clean room, class 100 under laminar flow, for work on optical components,
– a clean room, class 1000 under laminar flow, for work on detectors,
– Our in-house shared computing equipment includes several machines for data reduction or computing, and data storage. More intensive computing or storage needs are redirected to the local Tier-2 computing facility GRICAD.

Equipments used by IPAG

IPAG scientists analyse and collect data using all major international facilities accessible to French scientists: the instruments on the telescopes of ESO (e.g. SPHERE, GRAVITY), the facilities of IRAM (NIKA2 at the 30m, NOEMA), CFHT (Spirou), ALMA, the space probes and telescopes of ESA (e.g. Rosetta, Juice, Cassini, Gaia, Planck, Herschel, XMM, Integral). IPAG scientists also use data from the Chara interferometer in the US, from NASA (e.g. New Horizons, Osiris-REX, JWST, Fermi-LAT, NuSTAR) or JAXA missions (e.g. Hayabusa 2). At the national level, IPAG scientists are significant users of the OHP telescopes and the GENCI national computing facilities.