Herschel is Europe’s far infrared space observatory that was launched on May 2009 and is actually being operated by ESA. IAPS has the national coordination of the project, to which are participating the Institute of Radioastronomy (IRA), the LENS of Arcetri, the Observatories of Arcetri, Padua and Trieste and the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padua.
IAPS also directly contributes to the mission developing the date Processing Unit (DPU) and the on-board software (OBS) of the 3 instruments, participating to the 3 Instrument Control Center (ICC) and to the maintenance of the OBS.