Events archive
2014 events
11/20/2014: Integral mission extension to December 2016 confirmed by ESA's Science Programme Committee.
08/28/2014: Discovery of 56Co gamma ray emission from a Type Ia supernova with the Integral observatory.
Analysing the observations of the type Ia supernova SN2014J with the SPI spectrometer and the ISGRI / IBIS imager on the Integral space observatory (International Gamma-Ray Laboratory of the European Space Agency), a team of researchers, including researchers from France, has discovered low-energy gamma-ray emission lines (photons between 100 keV and 10 MeV). This is the first time that such radiation has been observed from this type of supernova.
Images of the M82 galaxy taken between 6 and 23 January 2014.
The supernova is visible above the arrow from 18 January.
Credits: KAIT/LOSS - W. Zheng and A. Filippenko, UC Berkeley.
Read the full news article in the Scientific Results page.
Read another article about this news on ESA's website.
2013 events
06/19/2013: Debris from stellar explosions in the Galaxy's fast lane.
A team lead by Karsten Kretschmer from the Astroparticules et Cosmologie (APC) laboratory, supported by CNES, analysed the observations made by the SPI spectrometer on ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory to measure the surprisingly high velocity of the hot gas ejected by massive stars into the inner regions of the Milky Way.
Read the full news article in the Scientific Results page.
Read another article about this news on ESA's website.
06/19/2013: Mission extension to December 2016 subject to mid-term confirmation in late 2014.
03/2013: High-mass X-ray binaries trace the Milky Way's spiral arms
Observations of high-energy phenomena, in particular with the Integral spacecraft, have discovered numerous massive X binary sources in the Milky Way. While more than 200 are catalogued, until now their locations have not been fixed very precisely. By measuring exactly the distance of a sample of 50 such sources, two researchers from the Service d'Astrophysique-Laboratoire AIM du CEA-Irfu in Saclay, supported by CNES, showed that these sources are in a cluster of 1,000 light years located in the star formation complexes in the spiral arms of the Milky Way. Their work, published in The Astrophysical Journal, provides new insight into the environment where these systems were born and evolved.
Read the full news article n the Scientific Results page.
Read another article about this news on ESA's website
2012 events
10/2012: Integral is ten years old...
ESA's Integral mission is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its launch, which occured on 17 October 2002. Over the past decade, the mission has observed the entire sky at hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray energies with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, shedding new light on several classes of astronomical sources, galactic and extragalactic alike. Highlights of the mission so far have included the study of the emission from electron-positron annihilation across the sky, the discovery of two previously unknown classes of X-ray binaries, the characterization of the cosmic X-ray background and the first detection of polarization in gamma-ray sources.
Read the full news article on ESA's website
And another article about the event on ESA's website.
04/2012: The nature of a new class of X-ray binaries, recently discovered by the Integral high-energy observatory, revealed by ESO and Spitzer observations...
01/2012: SPI reveals the origin of the hard X-ray emission of the Milky Way as the product of the interaction of cosmic rays with the Galaxy's interstellar radiation field...
2011 events
12/23/2011: Integral deciphers diffuse signature of cosmic-ray electrons...
09/29/2011: ESA spacecraft reveals new anatomy around a black hole...
03/24/2011: First gamma-ray polarization measurements around a galactic black hole.
2010 events
11/19/2010: Mission extension to December 2014 subject to a mid-term review in 2012.
07/07/2010: New Integral catalogue expands gamma-ray horizons.
2009 events
10/02/2009: Mission extension to December 2012 subject to a mid-term review in 2010.
04/03/2009: Integral detects variable polarization from gamma-ray burst GRB041219A
2008 events
01/10/2008: Source of antimatter identified in the Galaxy by INTEGRAL
2007 events
07/25/2007: A few results of the mission
2006 events
07/27/2006: Mission extended to December 2010.
07/27/2006: A few results of the mission
2003 events
05/19/2003: Mission Performances Verification Review
2002 events
12/13/2002: Mission Commissioning Result Review
11/25/2002: In-orbit functional tests and tuning successfully completed.
10/17/2002: Integral successfully launched
10/10/2002 
: Integral mated with proton launcher
2001 events
05/31/2001 : The SPI Team after delivery.
05/09/2001 : SPI Flight Model delivered to Alenia Spazio (Italy).
02/04-05/04/2001 : Calibration tests at CEA/Bruyère Le Châtel.
08/03-03/28/2001 : Thermal vacuum functional tests at Fourier/Intespace, Toulouse.
02/12-02/26/2001 : EMC tests at Coulomb/Intespace, Toulouse.
01/29/2001 : Integration of SPI Flight Model MLI.
01/25/2001 : Integration of Flight Model SPICO/Active Cooling.
2000 events
11/10/2000 : Integration of Flight Model MASK.
08/21-10/31/2000 : Integration of Flight Model CAMERA.
08/16/2000 : Integration of Flight Model PSAC.
07/20/2000 : Integration of Flight Model ACS on the lower structure (LSA). ST Model ACS replaced by Flight Model ACS.
07/17/2000 : Reception of Flight Model Anti-Coincidence (ACS). Two main parts make up the ACS: the UVS and LVS.
07/2000 : Electrical integration of Flight Model AFEE1 and AFEE2.
06/29/2000 : Reception of Flight Model AFEE1.
06/20/2000 : Reception of Flight Model AFFE2.
05/17/2000 : Electrical integration of Flight Model PSD.
05/03/2000 : Reception of Flight Model PSD.
04/21/2000 : Reception of the first Flight Model Electronic Box : DFEE.
02/2000 : Integration of Flight Model harness.
1999 events
10/07/1999: S/C ICDR
Summer 1999 : SPI EM
- S/C level tests completed.
- S/C EM back at CNES.
- SPI EM hardware being upgraded for better flight model representability.
- SPI EM software being upgraded for full service implementation.
