Magali Deleuil
Planet Hunting: the Exoplanet Program of the CoRoT Space Mission
CoRoT, which stands for COnvection ROtation & planetary Transits, is a
French space mission with European participation, with two goals: the
investigation of stellar interiors, using asteroseismology and the search
for exo-planets, using photometric transits.
With a launch scheduled in summer 2006, the instrument is dedicated
to obtaining ultra high precision relative stellar photometry, which is
required by both programs. The exoplanet program will monitor the flux of
several tens of thousand target stars over a 150 day time period. Its
sensitivity will allow it to explore for the first time the domain of the
rocky planets in close orbits around other stars. In addition to these
challenging detections, COROT observations will provide a strong
enlargement of the sample of hot planet population. The possibility
to measure the planet mass from ground-based radial velocity measurements
will result in a significant breakthrough in our knownledge of this giant
planet family.
I will present the exoplanet program of the mission and the ground-based
observational effort, both prior and following the space-based one, that
will support the mission.