Astroinformatics and Space Sciences

Our Space projects are mainly funded by the following institutions:

• Swiss National Science Foundation
• European Space Agency ESA and Swiss Space Officea
• Research and Innovation Programme of the European Union

Astroinformatics

We develop software for processing small to very large data sets. Our most comprehensive astroinformatics project is the huge and complex data infrastructure for the Euclid space telescope, a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft for observing dark matter and dark energy.

Space science

We build instruments for space. Our team of physicists, engineers and computer scientists carries out all steps from design to production and verification of the instrument, in collaboration with the Institute for Product and Production Engineering IPPE and partners from the Swiss space industry.
The largest project at the institute is the Swiss X-ray telescope STIX, for which we are the project leader. STIX is one of ten instruments on the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft. Most of the work for STIX was carried out at the School of Engineering.
In the field of solar physics and space weather, we also conduct classical scientific research. So we know what it takes for a device in space to deliver exactly what is needed here on Earth.