ESA Science & Technology - CoRoT

CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) was the first space mission dedicated to exoplanetary research and designed for this purpose. The spacecraft was equipped with a 27 cm-diameter afocal telescope and a 4-CCD wide-field camera, built around the PROTEUS spacecraft bus, and operated in a low-Earth orbit (LEO) at an altitude of ~900 km (polar). Launched in December 2006 the mission had a nominal lifetime of 2.5 years. After two mission extensions and 6 years of science operations the instrument stopped working in November 2012. The mission concluded in June 2014 when the spacecraft was de-orbited. The project was led by CNES, with contributions from ESA, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Brazil.