Europe will launch satellites to study planets

The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch an artificial satellite to study planets around stars near the sun in 2017.

Illustration Cheops satellite. (Photo: Space)

Space quoted ESA officials as saying that CHaracterising ExOPlanets (Cheops), the name of the satellite that ESA wanted to launch, would fly around the earth at an altitude of 800km to search for planets around stars outside the Solar System.

Cheops satellite will be active for 3 and a half years. Its mission is to help the scientific community better understand the formation of extrasolar planets. It will also search for atmospheric planets. This is a new type of ESA space exploration in the future.

'By focusing on the stars surrounded by the planet, Cheops will allow scientists to conduct comparative studies of high-precision earth-like planets. We were unable to achieve high accuracy if we only observed on the ground , 'said Alvaro Gimenez Canete, director of the ESA's Science and Exploration Division.

Astronomers discovered 842 extrasolar planets from 1992 up to now with the support of terrestrial and space telescopes.