Recherche

The Corot satellite is designed to study the structure of stars and also search for new planets outside our solar system. The Corot mission is a world first, with French space agency CNES leading a number of French laboratories (from national scientific research agency CNRS), and participants from the international scientific community, mainly in Europe (ESA, plus partners in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Spain), but also in Brazil. The assigning industrial responsibility was assigned to Thales Alenia Space.

Mission
Its main aim is to study the internal structure of stars. It will use a method known as asteroseismology (observation of oscillation modes, which indirectly sounds the interior of stars) to determine their mass, age and composition.
The second objective of the mission is to detect planets outside our solar system, by measuring changes in the observed visual brightness. Scientists believe that they will be able to discover from ten to forty medium-size "telluric"* planets, similar to those in our solar system, and several hundred, or even thousands of giant planets.

Role of Thales Alenia Space
Thales Alenia Space has provided the Proteus platform, developed in conjunction with CNES, has supplyed the Corotel afocal telescope for this mission, and was responsible of the assembly integration and tests of the complete satellite.

Deeper in the program
With a launch mass of 605 kilos, the Corot satellite has been placed in polar orbit at an altitude of about 900 kilometers. It has an inertial altitude, with the line-of-sight maintaining the same direction over an observation period of five months.
Corotel his is the first spaceborne instrument to offer such a high degree of radiometric accuracy, with sensitivity to 10^-6. Corotel also offers extensive protection against stray light (from the Sun or Earth).

Planning
Corot has been launched in December 28, 2006 by a Soyouz rocked and has successfully passed its in orbit qualification review. The complete mission will comprise at least six observation periods for a total of three years. All the scientific community is confident to obtain significant results soon.

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Media
See Corot's presentation in video
English Version / French Version [WMV format]