PLATO: a mission to find Earth-like planets
PLATO: a mission to find Earth-like planets
The ESA mission PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is designed to detect Earth- sized, potentially habitable planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Here is an artist’s impression of the mission, which, equipped with 26 cameras, will discover and characterise thousands of exoplanets in particular terrestrial planets, but also exomoons and rings around these planets. To characterise the planets as accurately as possible, it is also necessary to understand the star. The fluctuations in stellar brightness that PLATO will measure allow conclusions to be drawn about the internal structure and evolution of the stars.
