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✨ It was only 25 years ago that the first exoplanet (a planet orbiting a star outside of our Solar System) was detected! This discovery was recently recognized with the Nobel prize. Now we know more than 4500 exoplanets, and their study has become one of the most dynamic and fascinating research fields in astronomy.
✨ With the help of Space telescopes, we are able to track new missions holding promise for very exciting findings. In this talk, we will provide insight into the design and development of CHEOPS, the first mission of the European Space Agency dedicated to the characterization of known exoplanets, which is already in orbit. Since its launch in December 2019, CHEOPS has already made remarkable discoveries, like the fifth planet of the TOI-178 system, and the characterization of WASP-189 b, one of the hottest exoplanets known to date.
✨ In parallel, other exoplanet observatories continue providing exciting new results, such as the recent discovery of Gliese 486 b, a super-Earth orbiting a nearby red dwarf star.
In spite of the great advances in exoplanet science of the last decades, there are still fundamental open questions about the nature of exoplanets, and on whether there are other planetary systems like our own.
✨ ESA’s exoplanet program aims at shedding light on these key issues. In particular, the PLATO mission, with a planned launch in 2026, will focus on the discovery of terrestrial planets orbiting up to the habitable zone of solar-like stars. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which will be launched this year, and Ariel, with a launch date in 2029, will unveil the atmospheric chemical compositions of a large number of exoplanets.
This event is carried out under a programme of, and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
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✨ Ana Heras is a Project scientist of the PLATO mission and leads the Astrophysics Observatories Section in the European Space Agency (ESA). She has worked as a scientist in a number of ESA missions. She was a member of the science operations center for the Infrared Space Observatory, and deputy project scientist of the Herschel Space Observatory.
Ana has lately worked in the fascinating field of exoplanets, first in the study phase of the CHEOPS satellite, and now as a Project scientist of the PLATO mission. Her research interests also include the study of debris disks around main-sequence stars and the detailed analysis of exoplanet transits.
✨ Carlos Corral van Damme studied Aeronautical Engineer at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and completed his Master’s thesis at SUPAERO in Toulouse. He started his career at ESOC, in Darmstadt (Germany), where he worked on interplanetary trajectory design, before moving to GMV, in Madrid, where he became Head of the Mission Analysis section. He joined ESA in 2009 as a System Engineer and Team Leader in the Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) at ESTEC, in Noordwijk (the Netherlands).
In 2012, he was appointed as Principal System Engineer for the CHEOPS mission, when the project was still at the conceptual design phase. In that role, he has been involved in the complete development of CHEOPS until its successful launch in 2019 and further in-orbit commissioning. Carlos is currently part of the core ESA team for the Comet Interceptor mission, planned for launch in 2029.