PLATO
Plato is ESA's Cosmic Vision exoplanet observatory, planned for launch in March 2027 on Ariane 62 from ELA-4 at Europe's Spaceport. Its 26 cameras will monitor more than 200,000 stars to find and characterize terrestrial exoplanets and use asteroseismology to determine the properties of their host stars from a large orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point.
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Identity
- Aliases
- PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of starsPlato
- Name
- PLATO
- Status
- planned
Details
- Astronauts
- -
- Description
- Plato is ESA's Cosmic Vision exoplanet observatory, planned for launch in March 2027 on Ariane 62 from ELA-4 at Europe's Spaceport. Its 26 cameras will monitor more than 200,000 stars to find and characterize terrestrial exoplanets and use asteroseismology to determine the properties of their host stars from a large orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point.
- Destination
- Halo orbit around the Sun–Earth L2 point, approximately 1.5 million km beyond Earth, for monitoring more than 200,000 stars to find terrestrial exoplanets, measure their sizes, detect exomoons and rings, and characterize host stars through asteroseismology
- Launch Site
- Outcome
- Planned. The integrated flight spacecraft has completed major space-environment testing; ESA currently schedules launch for March 2027, followed by transfer and commissioning around the Sun-Earth L2 point.
- Programs
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Assets & Meta
- Creation Time
- April 26, 2026 at 14:53:08 UTC
- Updated Time
- August 22, 2026 at 14:21:41 UTC
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