The Planck Satellite: Status & Perspectives

Abstract

Planck was successfully launched on May 14th, 2009, from the Kourou space port, in French Guyana. After recalling the objectives that we set out - back in 1996 - to fulfill with this project, I recall some of the technological breakthroughs which needed to be made and report on the exciting scientific outlook of the project in light of the knowledge we now have of the actual performances of the two on-board instruments. I also include one of our more recent results even though it was not yet available at the time of the conference.