Exo-planets (artist's impression)
A new space mission involving physicists from Queen’s University Belfast is on the hunt for life-bearing planets far beyond our solar system.
PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars) is one of three missions to share in a £3.65 million development grant from the UK Space Agency.
In June 2011, The European Space Agency will choose two of the three missions to build and launch into orbit between 2017 and 2020.
“Planet hunter” Professor Don Pollacco, from Queen’s School of Maths and Physics, is leading the PLATO team.
“The discovery of life-bearing planets is one of the major scientific and philosophical challenges of our time and at Queen’s we have been active in this area for many years,” he explains.
Searching for exo-planets
“Already our SuperWASP experiment, using ground-based telescopes, has discovered 43 exo-planets so far,” he says.
Exo-planets are extra-solar planets, and the mission will scan for various signs of life.
The study of these planets is one of the most dynamic and exciting areas of modern astronomy. Since the first discovery in 1995 of a planet around a normal sun-like star, more than 470 planets have been discovered.
Learn more
Check out the Queen’s Astrophysics Research Centre’s website for more about exo-planets, hot stars, molecular astrophysics, supernovae and solar physics.
