Move over SETI, you might have a little competition. Well maybe not exactly since SETI is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the newly launched space telescope is only looking for planets. Last December the French Space Agency, CNES, booked passage on a Soyuz rocket for it's telescope and it was launched flawlessly. By the way, that was actually the 66th launch for a Soyuz. The Russians have quite a deal going with them. They keep improving them and this one had an improved third stage engine. It was a Soyuz 2 version 1B. It was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Soyuz now has a digital control system installed. What is so great about this? In essence the Russians have made the Soyuz compatible with the instruments of the European spaceport in French Guiana and it is scheduled to be launched from there also, in a couple of years. When you think of it, the shuttle was supposed to make these types of launches cheaper than rockets and instead has made them about 10 times more expensive.

The telescope probe is named COROT. The name of the probe means 'Convection Rotation and planetary Transits'. It is on a planet seeking mission, but it will also be studying the interior of stars. It has quite a job ahead of it. The telescope is only 30 centimeters and has been compared to a 10.5 inch telescope, but I think it is closer to a 12 inch. It will monitor over 120,000 stars looking for those elusive planets. The French put out a call for partners when they decided to build this probe and they were joined by several European countries and Brazil. Since the satellite was launched it has been running tests and it won't be until late February or March before the search for planets begins.

Space telescopes present an advantage over ground based ones, in that they avoid the rippling effects of the atmosphere and avoid all the non seeing days. This used to be even a bigger problem for astronomers than it is today, because we now have a thing called adoptive optics. A computer makes thousands of corrections to the telescope mirror by activating adjusters behind the mirrors. This is of no use however on days where there is bad weather, such as storms or clouds. Launching telescopes into space is still more efficient for seeing. Sometimes something is designed for a specific purpose and surprises everyone by making a different type of discovery. Maybe COROT will do this for us? One thing about COROT that puzzles me is the fact it was designed to discover planets that orbit stars in 50 days or less. I don't understand why the French limited planet discoveries to this area? This means that the planets would have to be very close to their star or extremely fast in orbiting, which is unlikely. Look at Mercury for example, that planet takes 88 days to orbit our sun, so a planet orbiting in 50 days has to be much closer to their sun. The COROT was conceived in the mid 1990s and for those of you who think that this was a long time to completion, the Hubble space telescope was conceived in 1946.

Hubble Space Telescope

CNES has decided to look in two areas for planets. One area is toward the center of the galaxy and the other is away from the center. Is COROT the only telescope on this mission? it is for now, but a planned launch in 2008 will put NASA'S Kepler satellite with a 37.4 inch telescope in orbit, if everything goes well, it is thought that this scope will be able to spot even smaller planets. The primary mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope is about 94.5 inches. Is the Hubble telescope so busy that they can't use it to look for planets? NO! The Hubble is not suited for this type of work because the field of view is too small, brightness has to be constantly monitored and it's photometer can not keep track of 100,000 stars simultaneously.

COROT is only 1,400 pounds. This is quite an accomplishment when you consider the size of the telescope it is carrying. It is in a polar orbit and is about 557 miles high with an inclination of 90 degrees. The mission doesn't have that long of a life. It is projected to last about 2.5 years. Along with the telescope is a camera of course, that will take pictures and they will be beamed back to Earth. So how does one find out if a planet exists? The accepted way, and COROT is going to use this method, is to look for a slight diminutions of light from a star that only lasts for a very short time. That is caused by a planet or body passing between the star and the telescope. As a planet orbits a sun that is exactly what happens.

 

Will the scientists be correct when they predict that during COROT's life span it will discover dozens of small rocky planets? Who knows? They could be sorely disappointed, be right or even be overwhelmed by planet discoveries. Even if they are wrong, it might only be because of the criteria they have set for themselves with the fast rotation. It could very well turn out that within a certain distance of a star there never are planets of this type. Well whatever happens, we will be looking forward to new discoveries and maybe even disproving old ones.