Enabling Grid technologies for Planck space mission

PLANCK, the ESA satellite aimed at mapping the microwave sky through two complete sky surveys, will fly in 2007. It is an extremely demanding space mission in terms of computing power and data storage. PLANCK simulations mimic the whole mission starting from a virtual sky (ideal or contaminated by introducing several noise sources). Their main goal is the validation of the acquisition and reduction procedure that will be used to build the final scientific data during the operative phase of the mission. The GRID technology seems to be a promising answer to data storage and processing needs of the satellite. In the framework of the EGEE grid infrastructure, we managed to run a number of experiments aimed at designing and defining an application specific environment for the simulation software and data sharing. Our successful experiments demonstrate that the "gridification" of Planck pipelines is not only possible but even extremely convenient in terms of data processing speed and data sharing.