CoRoT exoplanet hunter mission extended

CNES, together with its national partners (CNRS and Observatoire de Paris) and international partners (Austria, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, ESA, Spain), has extended the operations of the CoRoT mission for three additional years, until 31 March 2013. The decision was taken on Friday October 23rd.

CoRoT is a minisatellite devoted to the study of the internal structure of the stars and to the hunt for planets outside the Solar System, called exoplanets. It was launched on 27 December 2006, and the initial duration of the mission was 3 years.

But the scientific results up to now are of such importance that the mission extension has become obvious. For instance, CoRoT detected vibrations of various types of stars, some similar to the Sun, some very different such as the red giants. The CNES satellite also revealed that most of the stars are much more variable than expected. On the exoplanets side, the crop is presently 7 confirmed planets, and many more candidates are currently scrutinized at by ground telescopes. Several of these detections are world firsts, like the smallest and the only rocky one known up to now, CoRoT-7b, which is also the one exhibiting the shortest revolution period around its host star (20 hours), or like the densest one, CoRoT-3b.

These results, which are gathered in a special issue of the scientific review Astronomy & Astrophysics, are major breakthroughs for the stellar physics and for the exoplanets search. This is the ground for the mission extension, which was decided after an exhaustive scientific and technical review process, in order to fully exploit these capacities.

In the field of the stars study, the mission extension will allow to sound new types of stars and also to revisit more deeply those which have exhibited the most unexpected behaviours. About the exoplanets, beyond a greater number of detections, the three additional years will be devoted in particular to the search for "hot super earths", that is to say planets slightly more massive than the Earth but much more closer to their star.

 

Source: CNES
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