Keynote speech 1: Far-IR astronomy from space; putting THz technology to work

Sensitive spectroscopy in the infrared/submm wavelength domain allows astronomers to directly assess the physical state and energy balance of cool matter in space, and thus enabling them to study in detailed the various processes that govern formation and evolution of planets, stars and galaxies over cosmic time. Over the last decades SRON has been involved in several missions using submm and THz technology to support the IR/submm astronomy community, first with IRAS, in the early nineties with ISO/SWS, subsequently with the Herschel/HIFI instrument and since 2009 in preparing the SAFARI instrument for the SPICA mission. Developments for Herschel have also led to a fruitful cooperation in the ALMA project to supply band 9 THz receivers. The development path for these different kinds of observatories, and the successes and difficulties of making the technology work in space will be discussed in this paper, as well as some of the achieved and aimed for astronomical results.