PLATO Mission Overview

PLATO is ESA’s M3 mission and designed to detect and characterize extrasolar planets by photometrically monitoring a large number of stars. PLATO will detect small planets around bright stars, including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy, substantially enhancing our knowledge of stellar structure and evolution. With the complement of radial velocity observations from ground, planets will be characterized for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy. PLATO will provide us with a large-scale catalogue of well-characterized small planets up to intermediate orbital periods, relevant for a meaningful comparison to planet formation theories and to better understand planet evolution. In addition, PLATO´s Guest Observer program will allow for a number of complementary science cases, based on proposals from the community.

PLATO is scheduled for a launch date end 2026. The payload instrument consists of 26 cameras with 12cm aperture each. For at least four years, the mission will perform high-precision photometric measurements of a large number of stars (around 150.000 per field). This talk will present an overview of the PLATO instrument, the mission profile and its science goals.