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PLATO Spacecraft, Hunter Of Habitable Planets, Now Ready
The ESA's Plato (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) spacecraft has been completed, and is undergoing final testing.
By fitting its sunshield and solar panels, engineers recently completed the construction of Plato, the European Space Agency’s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets.In space, special mechanisms will automatically release the panels from their folded position. For this test, the array was released manually by an engineer. The opening of the left and right wings was executed separately. Their deployment went as expected...
“With this operation, we have completed the Plato spacecraft. The combined sunshield and solar array module was the last remaining essential part,” comments Thomas Walloschek, ESA’s Plato Project Manager.
“Plato has a distinctive design, conceived to efficiently integrate its advanced cameras within the spacecraft. Its overall layout is optimised to monitor more than 150 000 bright stars at the same time, with high precision. This will enable scientists to hunt for terrestrial planets orbiting stars similar to our Sun.”
To spot exoplanets, Plato carries 26 advanced cameras tasked with capturing the tiniest variations in the intensity of a star’s light. To achieve the necessary high sensitivity, the cameras must be kept cool, so that each camera is kept at its best-focus temperature around -80° C.
Protected from sunlight by the sunshield and facing deep space, Plato’s scientific instruments will cool down and stay at the required frigid temperature throughout the mission’s lifetime.
Once in orbit, the solar array will catch light from the Sun to power the spacecraft electronics. The sunshield will keep the scientific equipment in shadow, protecting it from the Sun’s glare.
(Via esa.)
Golden Age great EE 'Doc" Smith described a manual search for habitable planets in his 1934 novel Skylark of Valeron, but it's just too slow for science fiction fans.
Science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton nailed down the automated solution eighty years ago in his exciting 1936 short story Cosmic Quest:
I was near enough it now to set my automatic astronomical instruments to searching it for a habitable planet.These instruments were the wonderful ones our astronomers had perfected. With super-telescopic eyes each one scanned a part of the star field before them. And each mechanical eye, when it found planetary systems in its field, automatically shifted upon them a higher powered telespectroscope which recorded on permanent film the size, mean temperature and atmospheric conditions of these worlds.
(Read more about Hamilton's search for habitable planets)
(The telespectroscope recorded the conditions of these other worlds)
It's amazing that, a century after the essential insights and ideas were published to the world in science fiction magazines, the reality unfolds before us!
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/11/2025)
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Current News
Wolfram Alpha Mathematica Predicted by Science Fiction in 1948!
'The answer to the dumb student's prayer.'
Cislunar Space And The Space Lanes of Golden Age Science Fiction
'He had travelled the space-lanes of the solar system for the greater part of his life...'
NASA Moonbase Update
'The dinner was excellent. It was completely vegetarian — grown in specially prepared gardens in this Moon base...'
Neuralink Will Allow Humans To Communicate With ... Animals?
'Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind.'
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'It was a relief to enter one of the comfortable autos, whisper a direction down the tube, and just know that you would be taken to your destination in the quickest, safest, and cheapest manner.'
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'But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced...'
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'The vast spinning sphere of Factory in the Sky loomed above and ahead of us, gleaming white against the unfathomable jet depths of surrounding space.'
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'And if it doesn’t work,' inquired Lazarus, 'what does that make us? Sunspots?'
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'If Anyone Is Watching Earth...'
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'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
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'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
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'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
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