Guardian:
The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a space telescope
mission to launch in 2017. The first of a proposed series of
small science missions costing about €50 million ($65
million),
Cheops (
Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite) will search for
extrasolar planets that could support life. Although NASA's
Kepler space telescope is already looking for distant
exoplanets,
Cheops will look at star systems much closer to
Earth's solar system and in more detail. The search has been
narrowed by Earth-based telescopes, which have detected a
number of stars with planets in orbit around them, but Earth's
atmosphere distorts the view. With
Cheops, researchers hope to not only better examine
those planets but also seek other, smaller ones that cannot be
seen from Earth's surface.
