ESA's PLATO Mission Offers Hard-Won Lessons In Space Management

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On a recent blazingly hot and humid morning on the French Riviera, three industrial program managers for the European Space Agency's next big planet hunting satellite sat down with me to discuss their ambitious PLATO mission. That is, before giving me an inside look at part of the spacecraft in Thales Alenia Space's adjacent clean room here on the outskirts of Cannes.

PLATO, due for launch atop an Ariane 6 launcher in December 2026, has been a revelatory experience, offering state of the art lessons in 21 ST century multinational team building that span both cultures and technologies. PLATO has not only been enabled by lots of creative thinking on the part of academia, but also from an extremely multinational industrial consortium.

We are talking about more than 50 different companies supporting the development of PLATO in 28 different countries across Europe, Pablo Jorba, Plato program manager for OHB, told me in Cannes.

The mission is the result of a collegial effort that relies on cross communication at the highest levels, say the program managers. And one key to the mission has been cooperation between ESA, the PLATO consortium, and the core industry team.

The roughly 700-million-euro PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations) mission will house the largest combined digital camera ever flown in space, says ESA. And it will receive light from four groups of six cameras all mounted on the same optical satellite platform, while two small telescopes at the top of the platform will be used for fine guidance and pointing. PLATO's ultimate field of view will be something like 10,000 times the size of a full moon as seen from earth.

Germany's OHB System AG is PLATO's prime contractor, with the spacecraft being built and assembled by OHB together with Thales Alenia Space (France and the UK) and Beyond Gravity in Switzerland.

Once at the sun-earth Lagrange Point 2 —- 1.5 million km beyond earth in the direction away from the sun, the spacecraft will begin its four-year nominal science mission.

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