The European Space Agency (ESA) awarded Alcatel Space Industries (France) the contract to build  the Planck Surveyor. The contract covers the activities of design, development, manufacture, test, launch and in-orbit commissioning of both satellites.

The Planck Surveyor is scheduled to launch with the Herschel Space Observatory on February 15, 2007 by an Ariane 5ESV. The spacecraft will separate after launch and proceed to different orbits around L2, located 1.5 million km away from Earth.

The Planck Surveyor will be used to study the origin and evolution of the Universe. Planck will carry a telescope with a primary mirror of 1.5 meter in size. The telescope will focus radiation from the sky onto the payload, two arrays of highly sensitive detectors called the Low Frequency Instrument and the High Frequency Instrument. They will measure the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation over the whole sky, searching for regions slightly warmer or colder than the average. Alcatel Space will be responsible for the Planck Payload Module development and the assembly and testing of the Planck spacecraft. Planck Surveyor is named after the German scientist Max Planck who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918. The satellite has a mission life of 1.5 years, with a goal of 5 years. This project started in late 1996 under the name COBRAS/SAMBA, which was changed to Planck Surveyor after the mission was approved. (Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy Satellite and Satellite for Measurement of Background Anisotropies.)

Alenia Spazio will be responsible for the Service Modules for the Planck Surveyor spacecraft - where telecommunications and 'spacecraft housekeeping' components are located.