PLATO’s Mission To Discover Exoplanets Like Earth

The European Space Agency mission aims to discover new exoplanets in habitable zones. It is scheduled for launch in late 2026.

One of the hottest fields in astronomy right now is the search for exoplanets. NASA’s Exoplanet Archive currently lists over 5,700 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars.

And more discoveries will be on the way.

PLATO, which stands for PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, is a satellite made by the European Space Agency that will help put more exoplanets on the map. Scheduled for launch in late 2026, it will look at around 200,000 sun-like stars to categorize them and the planets that orbit them.

Science Friday guest host and producer Charles Bergquist is joined by one of the scientists working on the telescope, Dr. Suzanne Aigrain, professor of astrophysics at Oxford University, to learn more about PLATO and the future of deep space exploration.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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