PLATO, a space mission to search for new worlds

Are there other worlds in the universe similar to the Earth? Is there life in the universe? These are the questions we have been asking ourselves for centuries. If you were looking for questions, which we want to know the answer to more than these two, you would not find many.

In recent decades, we have gradually learned how many and what planets the stars in the universe have. The mission of the European space agency ESA PLATO will play an important role in the search for planets similar to our Earth. Ana Heras, who works as a Project Scientist for the PLATO mission, tells us about it at the next webinar.

What will the lecture be about:

The ESA PLATO mission will provide unprecedented data to study the diversity of exoplanets, with emphasis on small planets orbiting up to the habitable zones of bright Sun-like stars. PLATO will detect and characterize exoplanets down to Earth size using the transit method combined with ground-based radial velocity measurements, and determine the properties of the host stars through the study of stellar oscillations. The launch of PLATO is planned for 2026.

About the speaker:

Ana Heras is a scientist at the European Space Agency. She started her career as a member of the science operations center of the Infrared Space Observatory. Later she became deputy Project Scientist of the Herschel Space Observatory, which was dedicated to the study of the far-infrared universe. Subsequently, Ana was coordinator of ESA’s Astronomy missions. She has been involved in the study and definition of several future space observatories. In the last years, Ana has worked in the fascinating field of exoplanets. She was Project Scientist of the small mission CHEOPS, which was launched at the end of last year. Currently, she is a Project Scientist of the PLATO mission, which will search for exoplanets similar to Earth orbiting in the habitable zones of stars like the Sun.