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updated
29 March 2007 (16:07)
COROT COROT APWG COROT AO
  
   COROT Vienna Site
 
COROT is the third of the petites-missions of the french space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études spatiales). It is launched on December 27th 2007 by a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur.
Satellite & Instrument
The COROT telescope is an all reflecting system with 27 cm diameter of clear aperture, 1200 mm focal length and a focal over diameter ratio of f/4. This allows a large field of view of 2,7° by 3,05°. It employs two CCD detectors for the blue and red spectral part each with 1000 x 1000 pixels.

Stray light reduction to 10-14 is achieved with a system of baffles, resulting in less than 1 photon per image of parasitic signal. A pointing accuracy of 0.4" is required.

The telescope is mounted on a CNES PROTEUS platform, a platform developed for satellites of a mass of 600 kg. Using a already developed and tested platform minimizes the cost of the mission significantly

Model of COROT
 
  Launch & Orbit

The “eyes” of COROT -
the observeable area of the mission
COROT is launched by a Soyuz launch system from Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan. Launch date is december, 27th, 2006. The launch system will inject COROT in a polar orbit in an altitude of 896 km. COROT will be pointed in the same direction for six months and rotated for the next 6 month in the opposite direction. It is therefore possible to observe a stellar field up to a 150-day-period.
The mission lifetime is 2,5 years.