The CoRoT satellite was launched in 2006 by the French space agency and ESA to study stellar convection, rotation, detect planetary transits, and detect starquakes. It detects planets as small as Earth by measuring the small dips in a star's luminosity caused when a planet passes in front. CoRoT has discovered several exoplanets, including CoRoT-Exo-7b, which is less than twice Earth's size and orbits its star once every 20 hours. Finding small, rocky exoplanets is important to understand if life could exist beyond Earth and how life first arose here.

1. The CoRoT Satellite:
the search for Earth-like planets
PERFORMED BY: JOANA CAROLA AND CATARINA ALVES

2. CoRoT Satellite
On 27 December 2006, the French space agency
(CNES) and ESA launched the CoRoT satellite to:
 study the convection (Co) from the interior of a star;
 study the rotation (Ro) of stars;

3. CoRoT Satellite
 detect planetary transits (T) – exoplanets
that pass between Earth and the star;
 detect starquakes – acoustical waves
generated deep inside a star that send
ripples across its surface.

4.  27 cm primary mirror;
 Camera that takes one picture every 32 seconds;
 A very precise photometer (or light meter);
 A computer that measures the star´s light.
The satellite is directed at the same spot in the sky
for up to 150 days at a time.
CoRoT Instruments

5. When a planet in orbit around a star passes between the CoRoT satellite and the star,
it can be detected as a small dip occurring periodically in the star’s light output.
Planetary Transits

6. This plot shows the transit of the first exoplanet discovered by CoRoT: CoRoT-Exo-1b.
The decrease in the luminosity of the star occurs when the planet passes in front of the star
every 1.51 days. It is a very hot giant planet, similar to Jupiter in mass and size.
Planetary Transits

7. CoRoT can detect planets that are close to their star and
as small as our own Earth.
At 3 February 2009, CoRoT has found an amazing planet:
 COROT-Exo-7b is less than twice the size of Earth;
 It orbits a Sun-like star once every 20 hours;
 It is located very close to its parent star and has a
high temperature, between 1000 and 1500 °C;
 It may be rocky and covered in liquid lava or water vapour.
Small and Rocky Exoplanets

8. Finding small and rocky (Earth-like) planets
outside our Solar System is important:
 to know if our planet is unique;
 to understand how life arose on Earth.
Small and Rocky Exoplanets

9. It is believed that life must be linked to the
presence of liquid water on a rocky planets.
Finding an exoplanet as small as Earth is difficult.
More difficult will be to detect life forms,
especially if they were just bacteria.
Extraterrestrial Life

10. Extraterrestrial Life
To find life forms in a planet we must analyze its
atmosphere and detect a chemical disequilibrium,
because life changes its environment:
 When life originated on Earth, bacteria
produced an overabundance of methane;
 When new organisms evolved and produced
oxygen, the methane decreased and
the oxygen increased.

11. Extraterrestrial Life
The Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes detected water and methane on the
atmospheres of the Jupiter-sized exoplanet HD 189733b. However, current
technology is not sufficient to analyze the atmospheres of smaller planets.

12.  Thank you for your time
References
http://www.scienceinschool.org/2009/issue13/corot
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/COROT
http://www.scienceinschool.org/repository/images/issue2exoplanet3_large.jpg
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/image/151
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_189733_b