December 27, 2006

Baikonur, Kazakhstan

The European Space Agency's Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (COROT) satellite successfully launched on Thursday aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodome in Kazakhstan.

During its two-and-a-half-year mission, led by the French national space agency, the pioneering probe will study starquakes, which are acoustic waves that ripple across stars' surfaces.

The satellite will also search for signs of planets orbiting other stars. In a press release, the European Space Agency notes that "many of the planets COROT will detect are expected to be 'hot Jupiters'"gas giant planets that orbit close to their stars.

Recent studies have suggested that more than a third of the star systems that house hot Jupiters could also contain rocky, Earthlike planets.

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