'Ground-breaking' Spanish-built planet-exploring satellite launched
Thursday, December 19, 2019 @ 6:19 PM
A MOSTLY-SPANISH satellite was due to go up into orbit yesterday (Wednesday) – the first in history destined for monitoring planets outside our Solar System.
Engineers from Torrejón de Ardoz (Greater Madrid region) have been waiting in apprehension these last few days until they saw the Soyuz rocket go up with CHEOPS – especially after its planned launch on Tuesday had to be put back due to possible software problems.
But it was confirmed at around 04.00 this morning mainland Spain time that CHEOPS was now, finally, in orbit.
A European Space Agency (ESA) project which Spain has been almost 100% responsible for building, the CHEOPS stands for 'Characterisation of Exo-Planets', or planets outside the solar system, and is designed to study stars which are known to 'serve' as suns for other planets in order to work out whether any of these may contain the elements necessary to house life.
Using 'ultra-precise transit photometry', CHEOPS will provide some of the most accurate footage of planets light-years away ever shown.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com