The European space telescope PLATO of the European Space Agency (ESA), scheduled to start its search for Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars from 2027, has reached an important milestone. In the last few days, two main components of the spacecraft – the payload and the service module – have been joined and tested successfully. PLATO’s international consortium of scientists is led by Professor Heike Rauer, planetary scientist at Freie Universität Berlin and the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Searching for a Second Earth? Twenty-Six Cameras Scanning the Sky
Are there planets similar to Earth? Do they orbit Sun-like stars? How have planet systems formed and how do they develop? To answer these questions, the European space mission PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) will launch at the end of 2026 and will begin searching for exoplanets from 2027. Its focus is on planets similar to Earth in size and distance from their star – potentially habitable worlds. No such planet has yet been verified with certainty.
The PLATO telescope will use the transit method to search for planets: When a planet passes in front of its star, it causes a tiny but measurable dimming. Plato’s twenty-six high-precision cameras will be able to detect these dips in brightness as it scours over 250,000 stars for signs of planets. The mission also has the technology to determine the mass, radius and age of the observed planets with highest accuracy.
Successful Preparations: Another Milestone Reached
The PLATO satellite is made up of two main components: the so-called payload that contains the twenty-six cameras and the service module that houses the propulsion unit and the systems for communicating with Earth. Both parts were first built and tested separately, and now the modules have been successfully integrated and extensively validated in Oberpfaffenhofen, at a facility of the PLATO Mission’s Prime industrial Partner, OHB System AG.
This is an important milestone for the mission preparation, and with it, PLATO is still well on course for its planned launch end of 2026.
Further Information
- PLATO Mission Consortium: https://platomission.com/
- PLATO website of ESA: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Plato