'Corot' Boosted Aloft Aboard Russian Soyuz

A new Russian carrier rocket Soyuz 2-1B Fregat (file photo below) with a French satellite dubbed "Corot" on board lifted off from the Baikonur space center in the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan yesterday.

The Soyuz Fregat is one of Russia's workhorse booster platforms. It's about 150 feet long and some 35 feet in diameter using a four-stage engine burning liquid propellant.

Wednesday's launch was uneventful with the satellite achieving orbit as planned.

The French national space agency CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) developed Corot to find planets similar to Earth beyond our solar system. It's also capable of looking at the interior of stars.

French researcher Claude Catala told France Info radio, "COROT will be able to find extra-solar planets of all sizes and natures, contrary to what we can do from the ground at the moment. We expect to obtain a better vision of planet systems beyond the solar system, about the distribution of planet sizes. And finally, it will allow us to estimate the likelihood of there existing planets resembling the Earth in the neighborhood of the sun or further away in the galaxy."

European scientists say previous efforts at finding planets orbiting distant stars look for "wobble," that's the motion of a star resulting from an orbiting planet's gravitational pull. The problem with that method is a planet has to be massive enough to affect its sun's motion.

Corot will watch for a star to dim as a planet passes between it and the telescope. This will enable it to "see" much smaller planets -- the smallest about twice Earth's mass.

ESA says Corot will also detect sound waves that cause a star to vibrate.

In a statement ESA said, "These create a 'starquake' that sends ripples across the star's surface, altering its brightness. The exact nature of the ripples allows astronomers to calculate the star's precise mass, age and chemical composition," it said.

ESA expects the initial post-launch equipment checks and calibration to take about a month, with Corot's first observations coming soon after. They hope to find new, earth-like planets by summer.

Experts predict Corot will detect between ten and forty planets in it's scheduled two-and-a-half year mission.

FMI: www.esa.int, www.cnes.fr