Kate Isaak, ESA Cheops project scientist, talks to ESA Web TV about the science that will be performed with our upcoming Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, scheduled for launch in late 2019. She describes how Cheops will make observations of exoplanet-hosting stars, targeting in particular stars hosting planets in the Earth-to-Neptune size range, and how it will measure small changes in their brightness – due to the transit of a planet across the star's disc – to determine precisely the sizes of these planets. Combined with measurements of the planet masses, this will provide an estimate of their mean density and so a first-step characterisation of planets beyond our Solar System.
More about Cheops