Europe’s search for extrasolar planets
Europe’s search for extrasolar planets
Three ESA missions and, at times, also the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched on 25 December 2021, are currently or will be searching for and characterising extrasolar planets. The CHEOPS mission (with DLR contributions to hardware and science) has been in space since December 2019. The development of PLATO, whose scientific consortium is led by DLR, has now received the ‘green light’ from ESA to build the flight models of the spacecraft and payload and will launch in 2026. Three years later, Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) will carry out the chemical characterisation of a large and diverse sample of exoplanets. Earth-based telescopes also play an important role in the search for exoplanets.
