Missions
The Department of Physics, Instrumentation, Environment and Space (DPHY) designs innovative instruments and evaluates certain aerospace environments and their consequences on on-board systems.
The DPHY develops in particular:
- New inertial instruments for guidance-navigation, geodetics geodesy or fundamental physics, based on micro/nano technologies, electrostatic or atomic interferometry
- Methods and instruments for the metrological characterisation of flows and plasmas, based on optical spectroscopy, specific sensors or sources such as tunable lasers, OPO, LIDAR, photoacoustics, etc.
- Plasma sources and electric thrusters
It studies:
- Lightning and its impact on aircraft
- The space environment and its effects on electronic materials and components, and the resulting charge and contamination on satellites
(Caption) Plasma thruster for satellite: ECR technology (H2020 MINOTOR project)
