The European Space Agency Plato mission has successfully completed a series of tough tests under space‑like conditions. With this accomplishment, the spacecraft is on track to lift off in early 2027 and begin its search for terrestrial planets.

By fitting its sunshield and solar panels, engineers have completed the construction of Plato, the European Space Agency’s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets. Plato is on track for the final key tests to confirm that it is fit for launch.

The European Space Agency’s Plato spacecraft has safely arrived at ESTEC, ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands. There, engineers will complete the spacecraft by connecting its solar panels and sunshield, and carry out a series of critical tests to confirm that Plato is fit for launch and ready for its planet-hunting mission in space.

The activities to assemble the European Space Agency’s Plato mission are progressing well now that 24 of the spacecraft’s 26 cameras have been installed. Once in space, Plato will use its many eyes to survey a very large area of the sky and hunt for terrestrial planets. The spacecraft’s supporting element is also coming together in parallel.

Overview of the Plato mission

Not too hot... not too cold... just right! In our search for extraterrestrial life we need somewhere to start, and if life out there looks anything like it does on Earth, liquid water is indispensable. That is why scientists came up with the concept of the habitable zone, the region around a star where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist on the surface of a planet.

Space is quiet, as no sound can propagate through the vacuum. Billions of stars try to overcome this silence with their songs, but to no avail. As their music contains a lot of information, scientists searched for a way to listen. Stars’ sounds are created when they expand and contract, and during this process their brightness oscillates along with the expansion and contraction. Because scientists have found these small brightness variations in gathered starlight, they can now ‘hear’ the music. ESA’s Plato mission will look for the oscillations and reveal the orchestra of many stars.

In the search for Earth-like planets orbiting bright stars in the Universe, ESA’s Plato mission needs to look at a large patch of the sky for a long time using a sensitive camera.