Course of Project Management (PM) for PlanetS

The PM course successfully took place in Avril/May 2020. Initially proposed to PlanetS collaborators as a mixed online-onsite course but, due to the extraordinary Covid-19 situation, it was re-shapes to a 100% online. The main objective of the course was to give the basic PM methods to participants that can be applied in their current […]

Venture Kick : CHF 5,000,000 to kick Swiss startups to global markets The philanthropic initiative Venture Kick provides up to CHF 150,000 in seed funding to Swiss startups. In addition, it offers a well-structured entrepreneurial path towards building a winning business. Startups pitch to expert juries at three stages to obtain funding, gaining direct feedback, […]

European space research & innovation and Euresearch

What is European research and innovation? And why is it relevant to Switzerland? The European Union invests a significant part of its budget in research and innovation, the largest and most comprehensive programme being Horizon 2020, which runs from 2014 to 2020 with a €70.2 billion budget. By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is […]

SPIE 2020

This year takes place again the biennial SPIE international conference on Astronomy Telescopes and Instruments. It will be held between June 14th and 19th in Yokohama (Japan), link. The last 2018 edition was held in Austin (USA) gathering 2500 visitors and 125 exhibitor companies. For the 2020 edition the Swiss astronomer consortium NCCR PlanetS and the Swiss […]

Bench2biz workshop: call for application

Are you wondering if your invention/research is commercialisable? Do you need to get a clear picture on how to pursue your business idea? Would you benefit from personalised guidance from experts? Bench2biz Zurich 2019 workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs in science & technology is launching a call for applications to all idea champions. Designed for high-technology […]

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019

The EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019  covers a broad area of science topics related to planetary science and planetary missions. The event falls  from 15 and 20 of September 2019 and it is a joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. The programme of […]

PlanetS and SSC: a joint meeting

On March 20th PlanetS organized a joint meeting in collaboration with the Swiss Space Center in Bern. The joint meeting was aimed at informing the participants on the available opportunities of technology transfer and new ideas in the space domain funding. The event was opened by Andreas Werthmueller (Space Science and Instruments – Swiss Space Office). […]

The most stable source of light

To test the accuracy and stability of the CHEOPS photometer, a light source with a variability of less than the 20 ppm is required for the satellite. Since this type of source does not exist on the market, a team of engineers and technicians of the NCCR PlanetS and the University of Geneva has developed […]

Operation on HARPS’ open heart

In 10 years we have learned to improve the performance of optical fibers including giving them an octagonal shape. A team at the Geneva Observatory built of researchers, opticians, and technicians led by Francesco Pepe, the leader of PlanetS project 3, has decided to replace the conventional fibers that transport the light into the HARPS […]