Artist's impression of Plato

Artist's impression of ESA's Plato (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) mission, the third medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme. Plato will use 26 cameras at once to observe terrestrial planets in orbits up to the habitable zone of bright Sun-like stars, and to characterise these stars. Using such a large number of cameras will enable a combined higher ‘signal-to-noise’ ratio and larger field of view than has been possible with previous missions. Through the observations of bright stars, Plato will assemble the first catalogue of confirmed and characterised planets with known densities, compositions, and ages, which will include planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars.