PLATO kickoff: Objective of the meeting

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is a candidate M-class mission of the ESA Cosmic Vision program. Its main objective is to perform ultra-high precision photometric monitoring of large samples of bright stars, in order to detect and characterize a large number of exoplanets of all sizes and masses, as well as their host stars.

The PLATO Mission Consortium was constituted in response to an Announcement of Opportunity by ESA. It will perform a Definition Study phase of the whole mission until December 2011. A down-selection will occur at mid-term of this definition study, in June 2011, after which the final selection of the Cosmic Vision M2 mission will be made.

This meeting will be the first opportunity for members of the PLATO Mission Consortium (PMC) to meet all together. It will be organized around a full day plenary session, during which all aspects of the PMC work will be presented and discussed: Payload, Data Centre, Science Preparation, followed by three splinter sessions on the second day, one on each of the main activity branches of the PMC.