2024-07-20 01:26:00
AGI – Europe’s next major space mission, a telescope that will search for rocky Earth-like planets outside our solar system, will be launched at the end of 2026. PLATO, or PLANetary Transits and Oscillations of the Stars , was developed to explore habitable spaces. around Sun-like stars. The telescope will be launched into orbit aboard Europe’s new Ariane-6 rocket, which made its maiden flight last week after being developed at a cost of 4 billion euros (£3.4 billion).
The Drs. David Brown, from the University of Warwick, will provide an update on the mission at the National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, taking place this week at the University of Hull. “PLATO’s goal is to find stars around stars similar to the Sun and with orbital periods long enough to fall into the habitable zone,” he said. “One of the main goals of the mission is to find another Earth-Sun equivalent pair, but it is also designed to carefully and accurately describe the exoplanets found (eg calculate their size, radius and bulk density).”
PLATO isn’t the only exoplanet hunter, however. It’s also an exciting science mission. As well as the search for exoplanets, it will study stars using various techniques, including asteroseismology (measurement of vibrations and oscillations of stars), to determine masses, radii and ages.
Unlike most space telescopes, PLATO is equipped with several cameras, including one called ArthurEddington, named after the famous astronomer and physicist who won the prestigious Royal Astronomical Society gold medal in 1924. It has cameras 24 ‘Normal’ (N-CAM) and 2 ‘Fast’ (F-CAM) cameras. The N-CAMs are arranged in four groups of six cameras, with the cameras in each group pointing in the same direction but smaller groups. This gives PLATO a much wider field of view, improved scientific performance, resilience against failures and an integrated approach to identify “false positive” signals that could mimic exoplanet movement, explained Dr. Brown.
“The planned observation program is to observe two regions of the sky, one in the north and one in the south, for every two years,” he added. “The part of the sky that faces south is already chosen, while the one that faces north will not be established for a few years.” Several components of the aircraft have completed their production programs and are nearing completion of calibration tests.
These include UK-provided Front-End Electronics (FEE) for N-CAMs. Developed by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, these devices operate cameras, digitize images and transfer them to on-board data processing. Ten of the final cameras have been built and tested, and the first of these was placed on the optical bench, the surface that keeps all the cameras pointing in the right direction, earlier this year. The mission is expected to launch in December 2026.
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