PLATO, PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars Options

[Marz]

I saw this brief ESA blurb about a potential successor to the Kepler mission:
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMSHM7CS5G_index_0.html

It is under review along with Euclid and the Solar orbiter, but only 2 of these 3 missions will have funding to move forward. According the the website:
"The final decision about which missions to implement will be taken after the definition activities are completed, which is foreseen to be in mid-2011."

I found news on ESA's website that makes it appear that PLATO did not make the cut.
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=49385 ://http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/ob...objectid=49385

This is surprising to me considering that TESS was not selected by NASA, so it appears there are no follow up telescopes planet to expand upon Kepler's success, which is restricted to such a small survey site. I wonder if there might be another way to fund PLATO? The only other information I've gleaned so far is this website:
http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/perso/claude-catala/plato_web.html

Are these missions getting bumped in part due to the need to have JWST perform follow up studies? It'd be nice to see space telescopes getting fast-tracked instead of sidelined, and something else needs to replace Kepler in another 8 years.

[dtolman]

PLATO has been selected for 2024 launch by ESA as its 3rd medium class mission:
http://thespacereporter.com/2014/02/esa-pl...a-second-earth/

PLATO will blast off aboard a Soyuz rocket and commence a six-year mission, operating at L2, a point in space 1.5 million kilometers farther from the Sun than Earth. ESA’s Gaia mission will assist PLATO, with both spacecraft working in tandem with future ground- and space-based telescopes.

PLATO will use its 34 telescopes and cameras to monitor up to a million stars over half the sky, searching for the transits of exoplanets in front of their host stars. As a planet passes in front of, or ‘transits’, its host star, there are minuscule but regular decreases in the star’s brightness. In conjunction with ground-based measurements of an exoplanet’s radial velocity, PLATO’s data will allow calculation of the planet’s mass and radius. These results will in turn allow the planet’s density to be ascertained, revealing something about its composition.

PLATO’s main goal in its survey of thousands of other solar systems is to identify Earth-sized exoplanets and super-Earths inside the habitable zones of their parent stars. PLATO will also study the seismic activity of other stars, facilitating fuller understanding of the host suns of each exoplanet, including the stars’ masses, radii, and ages. Data on Sun-Earth analogue star systems will help us understand the evolution and arrangement of our solar system and how it compares to other star systems.

[Floyd]

Link to the ESA announcement. Link