Organization

CNES is the prime contractor of the TARANIS mission.
It oversees the integration of the payload, the platform and the satellite, as well as the tests in CNES premises (excluding environment tests), through sub-contracting.

All scientific responsibilities related to the mission are undertaken by the PI, Jean-Louis Piçon (CNRS/LPC2E), who chairs the Experimenters Board.
He is assisted by Elisabeth Blanc (CEA/DASE) in her role as Scientific Co-PI. This committee brings together the MIs for each instrument of which the TARANIS payload is composed.

The LPC2E supervises the development of the scientific payload and part of the TARANIS Scientific Mission Centre.

Other French scientific laboratories are taking part in the TARANIS mission:
the CEA with CNES, responsible for developing the MCP instrument, IRAP (ex-CESR), responsible for developing the IDEE and XGRE instruments, LATMOS, responsible for developing the IME-BF instrument, the LPC2E, responsible for developing the IME-HF and IMM instruments and the MEXIC electronic boxes, as well as the APC (Paris), responsible for the XGRE sensors.

Hokkaido University (Japan) will supply the photometers.
Electronic modules will be supplied by Stanford University (USA), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) and Charles University (Czech Republic) and Warsaw Space Research Centre (Poland).

Scientists from different nations (USA, Japan, Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Turkey, and China) are associated to the project as Co-Investigators for the instruments.