Switzerland’s Leading Role in ESA’s Exoplanet Mission

(University of Geneva, June 20, 2017)

The European Space Agency launches Europe’s largest exoplanet research mission, dubbed PLATO, with major contributions from the Universities of Geneva and Bern. The mission’s goal is to discover and characterize planets the size of the Earth and bigger that orbit around solar type stars in the so-called habitable zone. To this end, twenty-six small telescopes of 12 centimeters diameter will be mounted on a satellite to scrutinize about a million stars. The University of Bern is commissioned to design the mechanical structure, which will support the telescopes of PLATO. At the University of Geneva, scientists will work on recognizing and eliminating “false planets”. They will also determine the masses of the planets using radial velocities, a method the University of Geneva has been renowned for since the first discovery in 1995.