After three postponements for meterological reasons, the Soyouz VS14 rocket has been successfully launched from Kourou on 25th April 2016, with several satellites onboard, among them Microscope which has the objective to test the Einstein’s Equivalence Principle with the highest ever precision.

In France, in this mission funded by the French space agency CNES, ONERA is responsible of the development of the accelerometric instrument and of the Scientific Mission Center. The laboratory GEOAZUR (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS) contributes to the mission plan and prepares the scientific processing in collaboration with ONERA. Other European institutions have also contributed to this mission : ESA, DLR, PTB, ZARM.

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A summer school and an international conference covering the wide area of matter-wave physics and its applications.

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Cold atoms are at the heart of the new quantum technologies (atomic clocks, quantum simulators, quantum sensors, first prototypes of quantum computers, etc.), which, in the near future, shall have a deep impact both on fundamental as well as on applied research.