Highlights from the launch of ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The Soyuz-Fregat launcher also delivered the Italian space agency’s Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation satellite, and three CubeSats – including ESA’s OPS-SAT – into space on 18 December 2019.

Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will observe bright stars that are already known to host planets, measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc.