CBK PAN

The Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN, CBK PAN) is Poland's principal space-science research institute, headquartered in Warsaw with additional facilities in Wrocław, Borówiec near Poznań, Wałbrzych and Piwnice near Toruń. It was established by a decision of the PAN Presidium on 29 September 1976 and began operations on 1 April 1977.

From its founding until the Polish Space Agency (POLSA) was fully established in 2014, CBK PAN effectively served as Poland's national space agency; it has coordinated Polish space-industry participation in ESA programs since Poland's 2012 ESA accession, building on a collaborative relationship with ESA dating to 1991.

Over its history the institute has developed, built and flown more than 70 scientific instruments on over 50 space missions, including ESA's Cassini-Huygens, Mars Express, Rosetta, Venus Express and Herschel Space Observatory, as well as Russia's Koronas-Foton and Fobos-Grunt missions, China's Chang'e-4 lunar mission and NASA's InSight Mars lander. CBK PAN also built Poland's first domestically developed scientific satellite, Lem (part of the BRITE-PL/BRITE constellation), which launched in November 2013 to measure brightness and temperature variations in bright stars, followed by its sister satellite Heweliusz.

It currently contributes instrumentation to ESA's JUICE Jupiter mission, the IMAP/GLOWS heliophysics mission and the PROBA-3 formation-flying mission. The institute employs 217 staff, including 16 professors, and is led by director Piotr Orleański (since 2023). It is funded through the Polish Academy of Sciences, national research grants and ESA program contracts rather than commercial sales.