Potential
Before the beginning of the mission, the team stated with caution that COROT would only be able to detect planets few times larger than Earth or greater, and that it was not specifically designed to detect habitable planets. According to the press release announcing the first results, COROT's instruments are performing with higher precision than had been predicted, and may be able to find planets down to the size of Earth with short orbits around small stars. The transit method requires the detection of at least two transits, hence the planets detected will mostly have an orbital period under 75 day. Candidates that show only one transit have been found, but uncertainty remains about their exact orbital period.
COROT should be assumed to detect a small percentage of planets within the observed star fields, due to the low percentage of exoplanets that would transit from the angle of observation of our Solar System. The chances of seeing a planet transiting its host star is inversely proportional to the diameter of the planet's orbit, thus close in planets detections will outnumber outer planets ones. The transit method is also biased toward large planets, since their very depth transits are more easily detected than the shallows eclipses induced by terrestrial planets.
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