ESA PLATO: 34 European space telescopes will investigate one million stars

This is what the planet-hunter PLATO could look like. 

The image shows a concept presented by Thales Alenia Space. 

Credit: ESA

The exploration of planets around stars other than the Sun, known as extrasolar planets or 'exoplanets', is one of the most exciting topics of 21st century science.

One of the key goals of this research is to discover and learn the properties of Earth-like worlds in the Sun's neighbourhood.

ESA, the European Space Agency, will do this in preparing a new space mission named PLATO.

The mission's launch is scheduled for 2024, and firm discoveries of Earth-like planets at Earth-like distances from stars similar to our Sun will be produced after three years of observational data have been collected.

ESA's Science Programme Committee voted for PLATO at its regular meeting in Paris on 19th and 20th February, 2014, where it was one of five proposed space projects for a so-called "M" mission.

Not a single Earth-like exoplanet in a habitable zone around a star similar to our Sun has been found and characterized yet. PLATO will be a pioneer in finding new worlds for humanity to explore.

The PLATO Science consortium is led by Don Pollacco from the University of Warwick who comments

"This is fantastic news for Europe, PLATO will allow the first systematic survey of nearby planets for indications from advanced life forms (as well as slime)."

"A few years ago this would have been science fiction and now its coming to pass as science fact."

The UK also has major roles in the instrument itself supplying the CCD sensors (e2V Technology and UCL), much of the image processing software (Cambridge) and Public Outreach (Open University).

Heike Rauer

The PLATO mission itself is led by Dr Heike Rauer at DLR, the German Aerospace Center. "PLATO will begin a completely new chapter in the exploration of extrasolar Planets" Dr Rauer confidently predicts.

"We will find planets that orbit their star in the life-sustaining 'habitable' zone: planets where liquid water is expected, and where life as we know it can be maintained." she continued.

PLATO will measure the sizes, masses, and ages of the planetary systems it finds, so detailed comparisons with our own Solar System can be made.

"In the last 20 years more than one thousand exoplanets have been discovered, with quite a few multi-planetary systems among them", Rauer explains.

"But almost all of these systems differ significantly from our Solar System in their properties, because they are the easiest-to-find examples."

"PLATO firmly will establish whether systems like our own Solar System, and planets like our own Earth are common in the Galaxy."

This is a concept image of Plato by EADS Astrium, ESA's preferred supplier for space technology. 

PLATO, is an acronym for PLanetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars.

PLATO will find planets through the periodic dimming of the detected starlight caused by a planet orbiting in front of the star, blocking PLATO's view of a fraction of the starlight.

PLATO will also measure tiny changes in detected starlight caused by small vibrations in the host stars, performing so-called astroseismology.

Just as in seismology of the Earth, these vibrations reveal the interior structure of the vibrating body. Astroseismology allows us to learn the age of the vibrating star and the planets orbiting around it.

A new type of space telescope
ESA's PLATO is a completely new type of space telescope: it will use an array of telescopes rather than a single lens or mirror.

PLATO will use top quality cameras, and will have the advantage of observing continuously from space, without the interruption of sunrise, or the blurring caused by the Earth's atmosphere.

This will allow PLATO to discover planets smaller than Earth, and planets at distances from their host stars similar to the Earth-Sun distance.

So far, only a few small exoplanets are known at star-planet distances comparable to or greater than Earth's.

Unlike previous missions, PLATO will focus on these planets, which are expected to resemble our own Solar System planets.

European Southern Observatory's European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)

ESA will take on a leading role in the search for extrasolar planets

PLATO is a lively and vigorous European collaboration, many European research institutions and hundreds of European researchers are working together, with scientists from all over the world completing the team.

The catalogue of potentially habitable planets provided by PLATO will be the basis for follow-up measurements to confirm discoveries of new planets, using the ESO's E-ELT, or the next generation of large space telescopes, like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

With PLATO, Europe will be leading the search for habitable exoplanets.

So far only a few exoplanets have had their mass, radius and age determined precisely. This is needed to properly describe a planet.

"The observation of planets in many different states of their evolution will give us clues for the past and the future of our own planetary system", Dr Rauer remarked.

"By no means do we know all about the youth of our Solar System."

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ESA ERS-2 satellite: Arctic lakes show climate on thin ice

Floating ice (light blue) and grounded ice (dark blue) in lakes of Alaska’s North Slope near Barrow, as seen by ESA’s ERS-2 satellite in 2011. 

Credit: Planetary Visions / University of Waterloo, Canada / ESA

Ice in northern Alaska's lakes during winter months is on the decline.

Twenty years of satellite radar imagery show how changes in our climate are affecting high-latitude environments.

Changes in air temperature and winter precipitation over the last five decades have affected the timing, duration and thickness of the ice cover on lakes in the Arctic.

In this region, warmer climate conditions result in thinner ice cover on shallow lakes and, consequently, a smaller fraction of lakes freezing all the way through during winter months.

The Alaskan Arctic coastal plain is covered in a great swathe of shallow lakes 

Credit: NASA USGS

These changes in ice cover affect the local and regional climate, the dynamics of the underlying permafrost and the availability of water for residential and industrial use throughout the winter.

They also alter the physical, thermal and chemical properties of the water, affecting the ecology dependent on them.

But the magnitude of these changes had not yet been comprehensively documented until now.

In a recent study of Alaska's North Slope, published in The Cryosphere, the ice regimes of shallow lakes were documented using radar images from ESA's ERS-1 and -2 satellites.

The study reveals a 22% decrease of 'grounded ice' – or ice frozen through to the lakebed – from 1991 to 2011. This is equivalent to an overall thinning of ice by 21–38 cm.

Cristina Surdu

"Prior to starting our analysis, we were expecting to find a decline in ice thickness and grounded ice based on our examination of temperature and precipitation records of the past five decades from the Barrow meteorological station," said Cristina Surdu, lead author of the study.

"At the end of the analysis, when looking at trend analysis results, we were stunned to observe such a dramatic ice decline during a period of only 20 years."

The greatest change was observed during late winter (April–May) over the 20-year period, which gradually decreased from 1991 to 2005.

The ice experienced a more abrupt decline during the final six years of the analysis, reaching its lowest in 2011.

ERS-2 was launched in 1995, four years after ERS-1, the first European Remote Sensing satellite. 

At the time, these two satellites were the most sophisticated European Earth observation spacecraft ever developed, delivering new information to study Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere and polar ice, as well as being called upon to monitor natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. 

Credit: EADS Astrium

James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye" arrives - Video

The James Webb Space Telescope's NIRSpec instrument arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sep. 20, 2013. 

The Near-Infared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), provided by the European Space Agency and built by EADS/Astrium, will be the first multi-object spectrograph flown in space. 

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

A new NASA video gives viewers an up close view of the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye."

The Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument arrived by truck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sept. 20, 2013, and NASA videographers documented it for everyone.

After its trans-Atlantic flight to Thurgood Marshall BWI airport, Baltimore, Md., on a specialized Russian transport plane from Germany, it was moved into the world's largest clean room for further testing.

The instrument, built at the EADS ASTRIUM facility in Munich, Germany, is often referred to as the Webb telescope's "Super-eye."

NIRSpec is Webb's instrument that will use infrared light to analyze the physical properties and chemical composition of distant galaxies, stars and planets.

NASA James Webb Space Telescope: Arrival of ESA EADS 'Super-eye' - Video

A new NASA video gives viewers an up close view of the arrival of the James Webb Space Telescope's "Super-eye."

The James Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrometer, (NIRSpec), instrument arrived by truck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Sept. 20, 2013, and NASA videographers documented it for everyone.

After its trans-Atlantic flight to Thurgood Marshall BWI airport, Baltimore, Md., on a specialized Russian transport plane from Germany, it was moved into the world's largest clean room for further testing.

The instrument, built at the EADS ASTRIUM facility in Munich, Germany, is often referred to as the Webb telescope's "Super-eye."

NIRSpec is Webb's instrument that will use infrared light to analyze the physical properties and chemical composition of distant galaxies, stars and planets.

The video shows NIRSpec after its meticulously coordinated delivery as it was unloaded off a truck, moved into a clean room and situated by engineers for inspection.

The video above runs 1 minute, 51 seconds and is available in high resolution. It was created at the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA Goddard.

It is the last of the Webb observatory's science instruments to arrive at NASA. At Goddard, each of the Webb's four science instruments will be added to the heart of telescope, known as the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM).

The Fine Guidance System/Near-InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) have already been installed on ISIM and are currently undergoing the first cryogenic tests.

"NIRSpec's delivery from Europe to Goddard is an amazing international accomplishment," said Maurice te Plate, European Space Agency's Webb system integration and test manager and ESA MIRI instrument manager at NASA Goddard.

NIRSpec is a unique instrument, made out of a very stable and stiff material called silicon carbide. It holds a special NASA-developed device called the Micro Shutter Array.

"The Micro Shutter Array, is a unique electro-mechanical mask that has never been flown in space before," te Plate said.

"This part will allow the NIRSpec spectrograph system to measure light, sometimes very faint, of up to 100 scientific targets at the same time, while rejecting unwanted objects from its field of view."

U.A.E. buys French spy satellites in $913M deal

The United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf confrontation with Iran, has bought two military surveillance satellites from France that will give the region's Arab monarchies the capability of spying on the Islamic Republic.

Under the $913.2 million Falcon Eye contract, the Emirates, a federation of seven gulf sheikhdoms, will receive a brace of Helios high-resolution satellites to be built by Astrium, the space division of the European aerospace defense giant European Aeronautics Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales of France and Finmeccanica of Italy.

Under an annex agreement, French military personnel will aid Emirati technicians in interpreting images and share information delivered by the satellites, said officials who accompanied French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian for the contract signing Monday.

The Emirates spearhead efforts by the Gulf Cooperation Council -- the other members are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain -- to acquire a military surveillance satellite network to bolster an early warning system they've been talking about for a decade.

But, largely due to dynastic squabbles and mistrust within the GCC alliance established at the height of the 1980-88 war Iran-Iraq War, this and other GCC military aims remain unfulfilled.

However, growing tensions with Iran could spur them to set aside their differences.