Dec 27 2006
From The Space Library
France’s CNES launched the COROT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) satellite on its mission to study stars and to discover exoplanets—planets outside of Earth’s solar system. The French-Russian company Starsem launched COROT on a Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 14:23 (UT). CNES had designed the satellite to conduct seismological analyses of stars, gathering data that would enable scientists to determine their age, composition, and internal structure. In addition, CNES had designed COROT to detect previously undiscovered exoplanets by searching for the dimming starlight that occurs when planets transit in front of the stars they are orbiting. CNES was the lead space agency for the COROT mission; the project’s international partners included ESA and the space agencies of Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, and Spain.
Centre National d’ Études Spatiales (CNES), “COROT: Discovering the Stars,” http://www.CNES.fr/web/CNES-en/1401-corot.php (accessed 6 July 2010); ESA, “Europe Looks Forward to COROT Launch,” press release 47- 2006, http://www.esa.int/esaCP/Pr_47_2006_p_EN.html (accessed 6 July 2010); Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 638, 1 January 2007, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacewarn/spx638.html (accessed 1 July 2010).
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