This is a diagram of the layout of the equipment on the Corot (COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits) space telescope, launched recently from a site in Kazakhstan.
It’s a European Space Agency (ESA) mission, primarily run by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES – the French Space Agency, if you will) and it’s going to be looking closely at about 120,000 stars for signs of planetary bodies in orbit around them, in addition to studying the stars themselves. There’s a BBC story here, with video, more figured and images, and links to other sites, such as this condensed mission guide. The Proteus platform in the diagram refers to that fact that this is but one of a series of craft in the “Proteus” series, the platform itself being the design of the core containing the instrumentation and control systems of the device. Learn more about that here.
By going over to ESA’s site, you can learn a lot more about the scientific objectives and background for the mission, including some of the other science that it will do while looking for planets:
COROT will use its telescope to monitor closely the changes in a star’s brightness that comes from a planet crossing in front of it. While it is looking at a star, COROT will also be able to detect ‘starquakes’, acoustical waves generated deep inside a star that send ripples across a star’s surface, altering its brightness. The exact nature of the ripples allows astronomers to calculate the star’s precise mass, age and chemical composition.
This technique is known as asteroseismology and ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been taking similar observations of the Sun for years. The COROT data is therefore essential to compare the Sun with other stars.
Corot will be the first instrument that has the capability of detecting rocky (i.e., not the gaseous ones found so far) extra-solar planets, which is very exciting, although still only ones that are somewhat more massive than our planet Earth (no less than about twice the mass).
Upcoming not too long from now? The site claims:
ESA then plans to continue its search for Earth-like worlds into the second decade of the century with the launch of the Darwin mission. This flotilla of 4 or 5 spacecraft will take pictures of Earth-like worlds, allowing scientists to search for signs of life.
-cvj
(See also The Dynamics of Cats and Uncertain Principles for some remarks about this mission.)
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Canada’s MOST has also been doing this in space. One star at a time.