THE HERSCHEL/PLANCK PROGRAMME PLANCK PFM TESTING CAMPAIGN.

The two science missions Herschel, an observatory-type mission, and Planck, a survey mission, are combined in one programme within ESAs long-term science programme. The objective for Planck is to image systematically the whole sky simultaneously with two scientific instruments in nine frequency channels between 30 and 900 GHz to unravel the temperature fluctuations, the anisotropy, of the cosmic background radiation. For both satellites, which have now been launched from the European Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana, on a single Ariane 5 launcher, the orbits will be Lissajous orbits around the 2nd Lagrange Point L2 of the Earth-Sun system. Having surpassed the technological problems and more generally the development phase, this paper focuses on the extensive assembly, integration and tests undertaken for the Proto-Flight Model (PFM) of the Planck Satellite. The paper details the early stages of the integration of the PFM until completeness of the assembly. It then describes the logic and the various tests implemented for the acceptance verification of the Planck PFM. It finally depicts the Launch campaign activities up to the launch from Kourou in the first half of May 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]