Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets. This mission is not 100% certain yet, and is not totally guaranteed, plus ESA do have mishaps or sometimes get their budget cut. However the recent trend from European exploration with great results from Mars Express, Cluster, Rosetta, Xmm-Newton and Venus Express would suggest ESA is on a roll of success lately.
This Corot exoplanet mission will use its telescope to monitor closely the changes in a star’s brightness that comes from a planet crossing in front of it. In each field of view there will be one main target star for the asteroseismology as well as up to nine other targets. Simultaneously, it will be recording the brightness of 12,000 stars brighter than apparent magnitude 15.5 for the exo-planet study. The COROT project will contribute to the search for habitable, Earth-like planets around other stars.

The mission was first started by the French back in 1996, and later the European members of ESA joined the mission, the Russians will help launch it by Soyuz-Fregat at Baikonur

The corot handbook
http://corotsol.obspm.fr/web-instrum/payload.param/

Corot overview
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120372_index_3_m.html

the Video
http://corot.oamp.fr/renduhr.avi

Beginning of the COROT satellite validation/integration phase, on 6 January 2006
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm

The Corot mission wasn't intended to be as ground breaking or massive as NASA's TPF, but was much more like the Kepler project, Corot just like the Kepler mission will use "transit" method to detect these planets.
Exact launch date is yet to be determined, but everything seems 'go' for October of this year 2006.

the ESA do have a much bigger mission planned called Darwin, this is their version of NASA's TPF. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n..._etsearch.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741674/
European space agency's Darwin like the TerrestrialPlanetFinder project, will use a flotilla of space telescopes flying in formation to look for life on alien Earthlike planets, unfortunately recent funding for NASA's TPF-project has been cut. However because TPF and Darwin were so similar in their design and goals, a collaborative project between NASA-ESA had always seemed possible.

Thanks for the links, it's nice to see how it is going...

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COROT, is an important stepping stone in the European effort to find habitable, Earth-like planets around other stars. ESA joined the mission in October 2000 by agreeing to provide the optics for the telescope and test the payload at its European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. COROT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) is a mission led by the French National Space Agency, CNES. It is a 30-centimetre diameter space telescope designed to detect tiny changes in brightness from nearby stars. Launch is scheduled this year from Russia - occultation method searches for planetary transits when the planet passes in front of its parent star. The main pertinent parameters are:
1. The luminosity drop eta of the star :
eta = (RPl/R*)2
2. The geometric probability p of occultations
p = R*/a
3. The duration D of the transit
D = (P/pi).(R*/a)
where a is the orbital distance to the star and P the orbital period of the planet.
COROT will also be used to detect subtle brightness changes caused by sound waves that resonate through the star. These create a 'starquake' that sends ripples across the star's surface, altering its brightness.
The occultation method is one of the very few methods capable to detect Earth-sized planets in the Habitable Zone (HZ) of their parent star within the few next years.
The HZ around a star is defined as the orbital distance at which the planet temperature allows for liquid water. This is of paramount importance for the search for Life in the Universe.
ESA then plans to continue its search for with the launch of Darwin and the flotilla of spacecraft flying in formation will take pictures of Earth-like worlds
-occultation method gives acces to:
1. The orbital period, and thus the orbital distance to the star, of the planet
2. The radius of the planet deduced from the luminosity drop during the transit
3. The inclination i of the planetary orbit; this quantity becomes astrophysically interesting when compared to the equatorial plane of the parent star - deduced from its V.sin i and rotation period

other exo-planet missions to look out for are

NASA's TPF was a great design but got its funding cut
Funding TPF and splitting up NASA
and another ESA's Gaia, which seems to be going well
Gaia will map a billion stars

Broadcast a space message to 47-UMa
http://www.cosmicconnexion.com/static/index.html
This exercise in Active SETI (ASETI) appears to be the "celebration"
part of the COROT sat mission to find extrasolar planets, including Earth-size or Telluric ones. 47 Ursae Majoris (UMa) is located about 45.9 light-years from Sol. In '96, astronomers announced the discovery of a Jupiter-like planet around this Sun-like star. 47-UrsaeMajoris was one of the top target stars for NASA's planned Terrestrial Planet Finder ( TPF )

5 best stellar candidates for ET & Earth

Astronomer ids 5 best stellar candidates for ET & Earth

Top 5 SETI search candidates & Top 5 Earth-analogue cadidates

I was wonderering when that star would get some love.

The Corot mission will be launced by Russia's Soyuz-Fregat launcher at Baikonur

10 March 2006
Due for launch in 2006, Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets outside our Solar System.
http://www.euronews.net/create_html....ge=space&lng=1
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMISENVGJE_index_0.html
This week EuroNews takes a closer look at this 30-centimetre diameter space telescope which will be able to detect tiny changes in brightness from nearby stars.

some more on it here
Convection and Rotation of stars (COROT)
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/C/COROT.html
While it is looking at a star, COROT will also be able to detect starquakes that send ripples across a stars surface, altering its brightness.

Study of EPS ( Extrasolar Planetary Systems ) with Corot
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/Missions/c...dynamics.shtml

pics and movies
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/A_gallerie.htm

A couple dyas ago I read a news update at astronomy.com having to do with the Corot mission. The article took the line that Corot may be a beacon of hope in a field which looks like it does not much of a future due to the recent foolish NASA science cuts. The article said Corot is slated for launch this June. I thought it was supposed to launch in October. In any case, if Corot turns out to be successful, then we will know quite a bit more about the frequency of large terrestrial planets around relatively nearby stars. I say a bit more because due to the recent microlensing planet discoveries we can now say with 90% that 16-67 % of all stars have planets.

The Kepler mission, due to launch in 2008, will be a substantial improvement over Corot. I hope Kepler doesn't fall to the ax just like TPF in the next few years.

So come 2015 or so we should know the frequency of terrestrial planets around stars of spectral types M-F (single and multiple), but we will have no way to test for habitability because some fools thought the space shuttle and ISS are more important than space science.

A couple days ago I read a news update at astronomy.com having to do with the Corot mission. The article took the line that Corot may be a beacon of hope in a field which looks like it does not much of a future due to the recent foolish NASA science cuts. The article said Corot is slated for launch this June. I thought it was supposed to launch in October. In any case, if Corot turns out to be successful, then we will know quite a bit more about the frequency of large terrestrial planets around relatively nearby stars. I say a bit more because due to the recent microlensing planet discoveries we can now say with 90% confidence that 16-67 % of all stars have large terrestrial planets.

The Kepler mission, due to launch in 2008, will be a substantial improvement over Corot. I hope Kepler doesn't fall to the ax just like TPF in the next few years.

So come 2015 or so we should know the frequency of terrestrial planets around stars of spectral types M-F (single and multiple), but we will have no way to test for habitability because some fools thought the ISS, which has been pretty scientifically worthless, is more important than space science.

COROT will be launched in October 2006, the article had outdated information.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Thanks for the updates, its will be good to see this exoplanet mission fly

some photos of the telescope

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOVO8YFDD_Germany_1.html

Rotation speed and stellar axis inclination from p modes:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603671
How CoRoT would see other suns

Corot Space Telescope On Target For October Launch

by Staff Writers
Paris, France (SPX) Apr 17, 2006

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Co...er_Launch.html
The Corot Space Telescope has completed its electromagnetic compatibility and vibration testing successfully and remains on schedule for launch this October, CNES said in a statement Wednesday.

transiting planet animation

http://www.iaa.es/corot/transitanimE.html

Transiting EXTRA-SOLAR PLANET Workshop

http://www.mpia-hd.mpg.de/transits/w...transitwk.html

....Over 20 ground-based experiments using the transit technique are being undertaken world-wide. Several missions from space have been launched or are to be launched in the near future, such as MOST, Corot, and Kepler. Despite this large number of experiments hunting transits, presently only ten transiting extrasolar planets are known, all in the
Jupiter mass domain: HD209458b (Mazeh et al. 2000), HD149026 (Sato et al. 2005) and HD189733b (Bouchy et al. 2005), detected originally with radial velocity. Five planets found by the OGLE group: OGLE-TR-56b (Konacki et al. 2003), OGLE-TR-113b and OGLE-TR-132b (Bouchy et al. 2004), OGLE-TR-111b (Pont et al. 2004) and OGLE-TR-10b (Bouchy et al. 2005, Konacki et al. 2005), and TrES-1, detected by the STARE telescope of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (Alonso et al. 2004), and the XO planet (McCullough et al. 2006).
The workshop is intended to address several topics related to Transit Astronomy, in order to offer a global overview of the status of the field, regarding observational strategies, methods to select transits, as well as detections and characterization of planets. Moreover, the workshop intends to offer a discussion platform for new approaches, methodologies, and the issue of radial velocity follow-up observations for fainter host stars.

I was searching the web for an exact launch date of the COROT and i was lead hereto. So news on the exact launch date? Everywhere i look it says October, but no site gives a more exact date than that, and now it is 2 months away at most unless it is postponed. My guess is there is a date set for every launch two months before, so the launch date of COROT should have been revealed...

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