COROT

COROT (French: COnvection ROtation et Transits planétaires; English: COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) is a space mission led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners. The mission's two objectives are to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars. It was launched at 14:28:00 UTC on 27 December 2006, atop a Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket, reporting first light on 18 January 2007. Subsequently, the probe started to collect science data on 2 February 2007. COROT is the first spacecraft dedicated to the detection of transiting extrasolar planets, opening the way for more advanced probes such as Kepler and possibly TESS and PLATO. It detected its first extrasolar planet, COROT-1b, in May 2007, just 3 months after the start of the observations. Mission flight operations were originally scheduled to end 2.5 years from launch but operations were extended to 2013. A new extension has been proposed to keep COROT in operation till 2015.. On 2 November 2012, CoRoT suffered a computer failure that makes it impossible to retrieve any data from its telescope; efforts for recovery are currently under way..