field and a 120 mm lens diameter. Each camera is equipped with its own CCD staring array, consisting of four CCDs of 4510 x 4510 pixels. The 24 "normal cameras" will be arranged in four groups of six cameras with their lines of sight offset by a 9.2° angle from the +ZPLM axis. This particular configuration allows surveying an instantaneous field of view of about 2,250 deg2 per pointing. The space observatory will rotate around the mean line of sight once per year, delivering a continuous survey of the same region of the sky. Launch The space observatory is planned to launch in 2026 to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point. Data release schedule The public release of photometric data (including light curves) and high-level science products for each quarter will be made after six months and by one year after the end of their validation period. The data are processed by quarters because this is the duration between each 90-degree rotation of the spacecraft. For the first quarter of observations, six months are required for data validation and pipeline updates. For the next quarters, three months will be needed. A small number of stars (no more than 2,000 stars out of 250,000) will have proprietary status, meaning the data will only be accessible to the PLATO Mission Consortium members for a given time period. They will be selected using the first three months of PLATO observations for each field. The proprietary period is limited to 6 months after the completion of the ground-based observations or the end of the mission archival phase (Launch date + 7.5 years), whichever comes first. See also Cosmic Vision, ESA program (2015-2025) List of projects of the European Space Agency List of space telescopes CHEOPS, a European space telescope to determine the size of known extrasolar planets, launched in 2019 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), NASA, launched in 2018, with a similar multi-camera design References External links Official gallery The PLATO 2.0 Mission scientific paper What can PLATO do for exoplanet astronomy? PLATO article on eoPortal by ESA Space telescopes Exoplanet search projects European Space Agency space probes 2026 in spaceflight 2026 in Europe Cosmic Vision