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Posted by: Rakhir Feb 10 2006, 10:40 AM

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


Corot home pages
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/index.htm
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=39

Posted by: ljk4-1 Feb 10 2006, 12:49 PM

Send a message to 47 Ursae Majoris:

http://www.cosmicconnexion.com/static/index.html

Apparently this exercise in Active SETI (ASETI) is the "celebration"
part of the COROT astronomy satellite mission to find extrasolar
planets, including Earth-size (Telluric) ones. COROT is set for
launch in June of 2006.

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/

http://www.esa.int/science/corot

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/planets/corot.html


Not that we should refine our ETI searches just to planets
(some would argue we will have better chances aiming our
telescopes at regions which show up in the infrared but not
the optical), but 47 UM does have at least two Jupiter-class
worlds orbiting at fairly large distances from their star (unlike
all those other exogiants that practically skim the photospheres),
allowing at least the possibility of an Earth-size world in the
habitable zones.

See here:

http://www.solstation.com/stars2/47uma.htm

Will the messages being sent out by CNES "survive" the 46 light year
journey to 47 UM? Will they even be comprehensible to anyone
there? Will it at least let any ETI present know they are not alone
and motivate them to respond? Is it wiser to keep our mouths
shut and let someone else contact us first? Or do we gain nothing
by hiding under our beds - except dust?

Posted by: Rakhir Mar 10 2006, 03:42 PM

Searching for rocky world
Due for launch in 2006, Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets outside our Solar System. 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.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMISENVGJE_index_0.html

Posted by: konangrit Mar 14 2006, 12:54 PM

The Euronews space magazine programme on Corot mentioned in the link above is available to view online here: http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php?page=space&lng=1 along with previous episodes of the show.

Corot is currently scheduled to launch in October, the June launch was put back quite a while ago.

Posted by: Toymaker Mar 16 2006, 07:29 PM

But it is going to launch ? Meaning the mission wasn't cancelled ?

Posted by: konangrit Mar 17 2006, 05:18 AM

" Meaning the mission wasn't cancelled ?"

Absolutely not. The craft has already been built. It's currently undergoing testing which is due to continue until August, with the launch due in October.

CNES puts the date of scientific data use as 2009, after the end of the primary mission. As I understand it there will be a total of ten phases of observation during the primary mission consisting of five 150 day observations with another five 30 day observations. Surely scientific data use could start after the first phase, somewhere around mid 2007. Correct or not? Obviously it will take some time to analyze the data, does anyone have an idea of how long this should take?

Posted by: Rakhir Mar 23 2006, 08:15 AM

COROT set to join planet search
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4054

A slight mistake in this article. They are still reporting a launch of COROT in June 2006.

-- Rakhir

Posted by: GravityWaves Mar 29 2006, 08:03 PM

Euros suddenly axe a mission that may upstage the US, that's a good one
I think you're confusing ESA with NASA : who almost cancelled everthing except that CEV ! ( although we did get Dawn back, so I suppose we should be thanking them )

The Euros seem to have only cancelled about 1 mission in the last decade

some more on Corot
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=38876
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=3086&start=30&sid=222d1b9232c17c3c25ae2d4df484ab42
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1172&posts=2
http://www.webastro.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=10936

Posted by: GravityWaves Mar 29 2006, 09:30 PM

I'm all for listening for space signals but I'm not sure we should be pro-active giving away our position

PS
what kind of a childish dork wrote this message ' Killallhumans '
http://www.cosmicconnexion.com/visu.php?lang=en&message=564&debut=0
'Le human-race is a parasite'
Thank you Mr.French Person for sending such a warm message to the stars

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 29 2006, 10:16 PM

This is more of a publicity stunt than a serious attempt at Active SETI.

While the particular "message" you cite is certainly juvenile and crude, I really
would not concern myself with it causing an interstellar invasion, and not just
because ETI probably would not understand French, English, or any other human
language outside of mathematics.

At best, this stunt might make an ETI aware of us as an artificial signal, but
its jumble of messages will likely be unintelligible to them. And recall that we
have been braodcasting our presence into the galaxy since the advent of
radio, television, and radar. Most of those signals already have many light
years on the Corot stunt.

Posted by: Toymaker Mar 30 2006, 10:42 AM

They cancelled Eddington


You don't need to worry. Any advanced civilisation nearby would know our potential presence. We are close to detecting extra-solar planets capable of life, others will too. And you can detect planets much easier then radio signals which in reality are received in a very short range.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Mar 30 2006, 02:30 PM

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0603671

From: J\'er\^ome Ballot [view email]

Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:52:51 GMT (50kb)

Rotation speed and stellar axis inclination from p modes: How CoRoT would see other suns

Authors: J. Ballot, R. A. Garcia, P. Lambert

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

In the context of future space-based asteroseismic missions, we have studied the problem of extracting the rotation speed and the rotation-axis inclination of solar-like stars from the expected data. We have focused on slow rotators (at most twice solar rotation speed), firstly because they constitute the most difficult case and secondly because some of the CoRoT main targets are expected to have slow rotation rates. Our study of the likelihood function has shown a correlation between the estimates of inclination of the rotation axis i and the rotational splitting deltanu of the star. By using the parameters, i and deltanu*=deltanu sin(i), we propose and discuss new fitting strategies. Monte Carlo simulations have shown that we can extract a mean splitting and the rotation-axis inclination down to solar rotation rates. However, at the solar rotation rate we are not able to correctly recover the angle i although we are still able to measure a correct deltanu* with a dispersion less than 40 nHz.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603671

Posted by: GravityWaves Apr 3 2006, 09:11 PM

ok the last few articles I saw said Corot would be launched in October 2006, is that date correct ?

Konangrit thinks so anyway

Posted by: Rakhir Apr 12 2006, 08:07 PM

The http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/index.htm is showing an october 2006 launch date.
And I received the confirmation from the launch campaign manager that this is indeed the planned date.

-- Rakhir

Posted by: ljk4-1 Apr 17 2006, 06:14 PM

Corot Space Telescope On Target For October Launch

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Corot_Space_Telescope_On_Target_For_October_Launch.html

Posted by: Bob Shaw Apr 17 2006, 06:52 PM

Do you realise that it therefore seems likely, what with the glacial VSE progress, that they'll launch the Corot before The Stick?

Bob Shaw

Posted by: konangrit May 3 2006, 12:51 PM

Some updates on Corot from cnes:

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm#jan2006b
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm#march2006
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm#april2006a
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm#april2006b
http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm

Posted by: GravityWaves Aug 4 2006, 03:53 PM

Thanks for the update, its about time we started to take the exoplanet transit search more seriously
looks like a great mission from the Euros

I hope NASA's future TPF gets running aswell

Posted by: konangrit Sep 4 2006, 04:58 PM

http://exoplanet.eu/corot.html

The Corot homepage has also been updated to show a 11/06 launch date.

Posted by: edstrick Sep 5 2006, 11:04 AM

does some body have a good PDF or printable pages on Corot. A professional grade spacecraft mission description, rather than a dumbed down PR sheet?

I'm too lazy and too overloaded to dig for one on the ESA Quagmire.. I mean website.

Posted by: GravityWaves Sep 8 2006, 07:36 PM

ESA website is extremely user-unfriendly, it might be only a few weeks awya but they have nothing on the homepage about extra solar planets

there's a lot of talk on the web about this one
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=38876
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4478
another Euro mission Darwin
http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Board=missions&main=514616&type=thread
PDF Exoplanet detection capability of the COROT space mission
http://www.citebase.org/abstract?id=oai:arXiv.org:astro-ph/0305159

Posted by: konangrit Sep 16 2006, 12:26 AM

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm#sept2006a

Posted by: Drkskywxlt Oct 8 2006, 08:28 PM

Anybody have an exact date for launch yet? COROT's website still says 11/06, but I see nothing more specific on its website nor any other. Is it being launched from French Guiana or Kazakhstan?

Posted by: Rakhir Oct 9 2006, 07:31 AM

It seems that the launch date has been pushed to december 18th http://corot.oamp.fr/.
The same web site was showing a november 24th launch date some days ago.

The delay might be related to the re-scheduling of Metop launch because, if I well remember, Corot will be launched with the same new upgraded Soyuz fairing as Metop.
The launch date of Corot might depend on a successful Metop launch.

Posted by: konangrit Oct 19 2006, 01:49 PM

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/

Posted by: Rakhir Oct 26 2006, 12:34 PM

Europe goes searching for rocky planets

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMN45PFHTE_index_0.html

Posted by: konangrit Nov 14 2006, 07:58 AM

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm

Posted by: konangrit Nov 23 2006, 07:49 PM

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm

Photos and Video:

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/A_campagne.htm

Posted by: Toymaker Nov 26 2006, 01:30 AM

http://www.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2150&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Also discussed was the upcoming CoRoT mission, a space telescope that will search for extrasolar planets by looking for transits -- where a planet crosses in front of its star and therefore blocks some of the starlight that reaches us. CoRoT will be able to spot short period transits of 50 days or less, so only planets very close to their stars will be discovered by this mission.
As I am a total amatour what does this mean ? Does anybody know in what AU from the main star planets can be detected ?

Posted by: edstrick Nov 26 2006, 09:45 AM

Corot will have short observation periods, a few months max, compared with the 4 year continuous glassy-eyed STARE of Keplar. Most of the planets it discovers -- AND CONFIRMS -- by seeing 2, preferably 3, transits will be in close-in short period <shorter than Mercury's 88 days> orbit. Basically, they're looking for "Hot Super-Terrestrials", as well as "Hot Neptunes" and "Hot Jupiters".

They can't see Earth mass planets, in all probability, but ones several times the mass of the Earth. But it's all part of sampling the "Parameter space" of extra-solar planets to understand the processes that made very un-solar-system-like planetary systems.

Posted by: konangrit Dec 6 2006, 01:46 PM

http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm

Posted by: Rakhir Dec 7 2006, 10:05 PM

Corot launch is now scheduled on 27 December after a leak was detected in the fuel circuit of the Fregat upper stage.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/COROT/SEMHWD9L6VE_0.html

Posted by: ustrax Dec 7 2006, 10:40 PM

My father's birthday...

Posted by: konangrit Dec 21 2006, 01:41 PM

Posted by: GravityWaves Dec 26 2006, 11:29 AM

Thanks for these links, I wonder if it can find these Earth-like planets ?

Posted by: karolp Dec 27 2006, 11:10 AM

Nope, but it may come close by finding "almost Earth-sized" ones in much closer orbits:

http://space.com/missionlaunches/061226_corot_launch.html

Kepler is supposed to find the first ones in Cygnus :-)

Posted by: mars loon Dec 27 2006, 03:22 PM

COROT has just launched at 923 AM EST according to spaceflightnow.com

here is the initial 1 paragraph story:

SPACEFLIGHT NOW

27 Dec 2006, 10 AM EST

Planet-hunting space telescope has lifted off

A Russian Soyuz 2-1b rocket with the European COROT space observatory launched at 1423 GMT (9:23 a.m. EST) from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The Fregat upper stage is performing two firings to place the craft into polar orbit. Confirmation of launch success is expected about two hours into flight. The French-led COROT mission will look for rocky planets around other stars.

link to ESA COROT site:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/COROT/index.html

looks like a live webcast here:
http://www.cnes-tv.com/corot_en/live_en.html

Posted by: mars loon Dec 27 2006, 03:37 PM

According to the webcast, the telescope lid will be opened on Jan 15 with first science results expected by the end of Jan

they are showing the control rooms in Toulouse, France and Baikonur, Kazakstan and Paris studio commentary

1st burn went well, CNES awaiting confirmation of second burn and spacecraft seperation. It was just announced that this info is expected in about 20 min from now

Posted by: mars loon Dec 27 2006, 04:15 PM

There is great on-going commentary about searching for exoplanets, looking for life beyond Earth, the mission of COROT and the method of science data release.

Soyuz 1st, 2nd and 3rd stages all burned normal.

Fregat upper stage 1st burn successful. After that there was a communication black out accounting for news delay

CNES Just announced:

Confirmation of 2nd Fregat burn SUCCESSFUL ! ....

and SUCCESSFUL SPACECRAFT SEPERATION !

CNES says everything is well on board at this time. Solar panels have opened. Correct orbit achieved

They are thanking all their international partners for the hard work and cooperation over the last 10 years of development

ken

Posted by: konangrit Dec 27 2006, 04:16 PM

Complete success, congratulations to CNES and partners.

Posted by: Toymaker Dec 27 2006, 05:13 PM

I'm very, very happy that the launch is success.
A question:As far as my limited knowledge about the stars and planets, I recall that existance of planets is thought to be related to metallicity in stars. Does anybody know if this criteria been used in choosing stars to study by Corot ?

Posted by: mars loon Dec 27 2006, 05:46 PM

Detailed online articles here:

ESA News release:

COROT on its way
EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: December 27, 2006

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0612/27corot/

CNN post:

Scientists launch 'planet hunter'
POSTED: 9:44 a.m. EST, December 27, 2006

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/27/planet.hunter.reut/index.html

Posted by: Olvegg Dec 27 2006, 06:25 PM

It can find one or two near M-dwarfs:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305159

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Dec 27 2006, 09:03 PM

It's a little off-topic but the November 2006 issue of http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Publications/SEMZUDC4VUE_0.html has an article by Gerald Crone et al. about the Herschel and Planck missions.

Posted by: ustrax Dec 29 2006, 04:49 PM

Congratulations and wishes for an extraordinary successful mission!

Posted by: Drkskywxlt Dec 29 2006, 04:51 PM

How long until observations begin and data begins to flow from COROT?

Posted by: Decepticon Dec 31 2006, 07:12 AM

We are talking about ESA here, If we are lucky maybe Summer 07.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Dec 31 2006, 08:04 AM

And a data release in early 2022, after the initial heavily-processed 'gee-whiz we wos firstest' PR shots.

Not that I'm cynical, oh no.

Pencil it into your workflow after MSL, OK?


Bob Shaw

Posted by: Thorsten Jan 4 2007, 11:27 AM

There is an article in this week’s issue of Nature about COROT (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7123/full/445010a.html)
mentioning that „after a couple of months of calibration, COROT will make observations for 150 days, then turn 180° and observe for another 150 days“ and that „the first results from COROT should be in and analysed by mid-2007, with ground-based follow-up experiments done by the end of the year“.

Let’s hope that the cynics won’t be right after all, because in 2022 NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finders coronagraph and interferometer should be up in the sky (if it’s not deferred indefinitely again) – and this is going to be tough competition for CNES and ESA (not talking about Darwin and Kepler and the sadly delayed Space Interferomentry Mission).

Posted by: ustrax Jan 4 2007, 03:34 PM

You have a good informative page at CNES site http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/

Posted by: nprev Jan 4 2007, 08:49 PM

Looks like the SL4 re-entered over the western US this morning; by all accounts, it was quite a show!:)

http://www.krdotv.com/story.cfm?nav=news&storyID=1898

Posted by: tfisher Jan 20 2007, 08:16 PM

I just noticed that while the http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htm is in typical ESA style not being updated with any frequency, there is a page http://exoplanet.eu/corot.html maintained by the extrasolar planet encyclopedia people which has more frequent news. Yesterday they posted the http://exoplanet.eu/papers/1ere_image_corot.jpg from the spacecraft.

Posted by: ustrax Jan 31 2007, 03:30 PM

The spirit among the COROT team is http://www.spaceurope.blogspot.com as the scientific observations will start in the following days...

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Feb 6 2007, 06:28 PM

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMWZB4ENXE_index_0.html
5 February 2007

Posted by: Rakhir Feb 6 2007, 09:37 PM

http://www.cnes.fr/web/5757-premieres-observations-scientifiques-de-corot.php (in French)

Posted by: ustrax Feb 7 2007, 09:56 AM

Rakhir, I've got the feeling that were just in the beggining of a great mission...

Posted by: ustrax Feb 7 2007, 03:33 PM

Malcolm Fridlund gives a quicky one about the two latest releases.

http://www.spaceurope.blogspot.com

Now I'm starting to understand how that baby works...

Posted by: Jyril Feb 8 2007, 04:25 PM

COROT is a CNES mission, ESA is only one partner.

I don't think they will publish any results that soon: finding transiting planets is not easy. First you have to find the stars that exhibit multiple planet-like transits. That is not enough, since several phenomena (small red dwarfs, brown dwarfs, grazing eclipses or blends by normal stars) can produce similar curves. And eliminating them takes time. Most straightforward method would be to measure radial velocities, but many of the candidates are probably too dim for that.

Posted by: Jyril Feb 8 2007, 04:28 PM

Finally an off-focus image that doesn't cause despair.