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This Tuesday, a Soyuz rocket takes off from the Kourou space center, in Guyana, at 10.54 am Paris time. On board, a European Space Agency satellite named Cheops which will be responsible for studying exoplanets.
The Cheops satellite has a powerful telescope, it will position itself 700 kilometers above our heads, where there will be no more stray light to blur its observations, because Cheops will have to benefit from a vision particularly precise to accomplish its mission. The satellite will have to sort out some 4,000 planets discovered in other solar systems for more than 20 years.
Sorting out means examining and differentiating these planets according to their size, density and composition. Then, by crossing these data with those collected by our ground telescopes, researchers will be able to determine which are the most interesting to study. That is to say those which are neither too close nor too far from their star, those which are rather rocky and of a reasonable diameter, or those which are likely to have an atmosphere, even water liquid on their soil.
A work which should last between 3 and 4 years, and which will allow scientists to focus their studies on these planets using even more powerful tools, such as the future James Webb telescope of NASA which should be launched around March 2021 .