This article delves into the PLATO mission, ESA's upcoming space observatory designed to hunt for exoplanets. The piece highlights the collaborative efforts of a multinational consortium of over 50 companies across 28 countries involved in developing this ambitious project.
On a recent blazingly hot and humid morning on the French Riviera, three industrial program managers for the European Space Agency’s next big planet hunting satellite sat down with me to discuss their ambitious PLATO mission. That is, before giving me an inside look at part of the spacecraft in Thales Alenia Space’s adjacent clean room here on the outskirts of Cannes.
The mission is the result of a collegial effort that relies on cross communication at the highest levels, say the program managers. And one key to the mission has been cooperation between ESA, the PLATO consortium, and the core industry team.The roughly 700-million-euro PLATO mission will house the largest combined digital camera ever flown in space, says ESA.
From there, it will look for extrasolar earthlike planets circling bright sunlike stars using the transit method. That is, by looking for a periodic, tiny dimming caused by a planet passing in front of the parent star. In the process, the spacecraft will acquire images every 25 seconds, for at least two years per target star, observing more than 200,000 stars.
Planet Hunting Exoplanets ESA PLATO Mission International Collaboration
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