Meet PLATO, the Next Big Exoplanet Hunter

Yesterday, the European Space Agency announced its decision to get into the exoplanet-hunting game with the PLATO space telescope. The Plato (which stands for PLAnetary Transits and Oscillators of stars) is a total boon for exoplanet enthusiasts. Since NASA's Kepler space observatory is no longer running at full capacity due to malfunctioning flywheels, scientists need another eye in the sky to scan for promising life-supporting planets. As a result, Plato may end up being a sort of Kepler 2.0, though the ESA has a different strategy for planet-hunting than NASA.

The mission is categorized as “M-class,” which means it will cost about 600 million euros, cheap enough that the ESA won't need outside help (in contrast to their “L-class” missions like JUICE—the JUpiter Icy Moons Explorer—which will require partnering with other agencies). The Plato is slated for launch in 2024 on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket, and will operate from the second Lagrange point, an orbital pivot it will share with the much-anticipated James Webb Space Telescope.

The idea is to zero in on stars with absolute magnitudes between 4 and 8, which are relatively bright, so that planetary transits will be easy to spot. But while the ESA has limited the range of stellar magnitudes they'll look for, they've enormously expanded the overall field of view. Plato will be able to scan up to 3,600 square degrees whereas Kepler only has a scope of 115 deg2.

As with Kepler, the focus will be on rooting out Earth-like terrestrial planets that could potentially support life, but Plato will be able to give us a lot more specifics on the composition of these planets. “Plato will be our first attempt to find nearby habitable planets around Sun-like stars that we can actually examine in sufficient detail to look for life,” said Dr Don Pollacco, the leader of the Plato Science Consortium, to the BBC.

“Nearly all the small transiting planets discovered so far have been beyond our technology to characterize," he said. "Plato will be a game-changer, allowing many Earth-like planets to be detected and confirmed and their atmospheres examined for signs of life.”

This is ridiculously exciting, and we can only hope that Plato doesn't suffer the same budget setbacks that have delayed the launched of its future roommate, the JWST. But to tide us over, the ESA has planned the S-class mission CHEOPS (Characterizing ExOPlanet Satellite), for launch in 2017. The S-class category is for small-scale missions costing about 50 million euros.

Cheops will focus only on stars confirmed by Kepler and COROT (the retired French exoplanet-hunter) to have transiting planets. The mission will calculate the radius of these planets, and will look for signs that they host substantive atmospheres.

Two other M-class missions received the green light from the ESA in 2011: the Solar Orbiter, which will be launched to the sun in 2017, and the Euclid, a dark matter and dark energy observatory scheduled for 2020. The aforementioned L-class JUICE mission will hopefully launch in 2022 in order to arrive at the Jovian system in 2030.

It's shaping up to be a busy decade for the ESA, packed with tantalizing projects. Not to mention: the acronyms for their missions are pure genius. We'd be happy to see more of those down the line.