On November 13, the Parker Solar Probe team has been awarded the NASA Silver Achievement Medal in recognition of its “stellar achievement” as humanity’s first mission to explore the Sun’s corona and the solar wind within the extreme environment around our star. The LPC2E participates in this mission through the SCM search-coil instrument.

The NenuFAR radio telescope (New Extension in Nançay Upgrading LoFAR), based at the Nançay radio astronomy station, began its major observation programmes on 1 July 2019. The LPC2E is one of the main laboratories behind NenuFAR.

The colour camera CLUPI (Close-UP Imager) was delivered on July 11, 2019 to ESA for integration on the rover of the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2020 mission. CLUPI is the colour close-up imager on board the next ESA mission to the Mars surface. It is the equivalent of the hand-lens used by all geologists during field work and thus it will play an important role to achieve the mission objectives. The LPC2E was responsible for encapsulating and testing the image sensor of the CLUPI instrument in the frame of a collaboration with Frances Westall (CBM, CNRS Orléans) who is Co-PI of the CLUPI project.

On September 19, the laboratory will celebrate its 50th anniversary! Indeed, the Ionospheric Research Group (GRI) from which the laboratory originated and which was initially located in Saint-Maur des Fossés (94) and Issy-les-Moulineaux (92), established itself on the Orléans campus in the autumn of 1969. Happy birthday to LPC2E, wishing the laboratory another half-century of success!

Parker Solar Probe is a NASA mission whose objective is to study the solar corona. One of its instruments is a search coil magnetometer that has been designed and built at the LPC2E. The Parker Solar Probe team has been named the winner of the 2018 Neil Armstrong Space Flight Achievement Award by the American Astronautical Society (AAS). This award is given for outstanding achievements as a crew, crew member or team.