Science in the laboratory

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Scientific news Published on 8 September 2026

Successful separation of the transfer module from the BepiColombo mission

After nearly eight years of travelling through the Solar System, BepiColombo is finally beginning its approach to Mercury. A major milestone was reached on 3...
Scientific news Published on 31 August 2026

The fastest star in the Milky Way orbits so close to our supermassive black hole that it is affected by its rotation

Thanks to the capabilities of GRAVITY+ and new analytical methods developed in particular at LIRA, an international team has discovered S301, a star skimming...
Scientific news Published on 27 July 2026

First observation of the rotation of a protoplanetary disc

How can we observe the birth of a planet? Around the young star AB Aurigae, located some 530 light-years from Earth, a vast disc of gas and dust features...
Project news Published on 19 June 2026

First Light for the French AIRS Instrument of the ARIEL Mission.

Currently under development, the French AIRS spectrometer for the future ARIEL telescope has just reached a major milestone. ARIEL (Atmospheric...
Scientific news Published on 11 May 2026

The Milky Way was shaped by a galactic collision that occurred earlier than expected

How did the Milky Way form and develop its current structure? A new study published in the *Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society*, led by an...
Project news Published on 3 April 2026

The French DraMS-GC subsystem for the Dragonfly mission has successfully passed the mechanical and thermal qualification phase

NASA’s Dragonfly mission, dedicated to exploring Titan and studying its potentially prebiotic chemistry, has reached a crucial milestone with the...
Project news Published on 21 March 2026

Delivery of the MICADO adaptive optics bench

An impressive lifting operation took place on 16 March at the Meudon site, marking a major milestone in the development of MICADO, the future flagship...
Scientific news Published on 2 February 2026

FIRST’s photonic lantern has just successfully completed the commissioning phase.

The beginning of February 2026 is a significant date for the research conducted at LIRA, since the dawn of the 21st century. The FIRST-PL (PL for Photonic...
Scientific news Published on 19 December 2025

First image of a planet so close to binary stars

With the latest Avatar film, set on Pandora, a moon of the gas planet Polyphemus located in the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest multiple star system...
Project news Published on 12 November 2025

Four laser stars usher in a new era for interferometry at the VLT

A week ago, four lasers pierced the sky above Cerro Paranal in Chile. Fired from each of the four 8-meter telescopes at the European Southern Observatory...