PLATO

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillation of stars) is a space telescope built by ESA to search and explore extrasolar and terrestrial planets. The discovery of these exoplanets will be carried out using the so-called transit method, in which the darkening of the parent star as a planet passes in front of the star disk is measured and analyzed.

Among other things, Plato will serve as the successor to NASA’s Kepler space telescope and will specialize in the discovery of Earth-like rocky planets near other stars.

Details you find here: PLATO

A total of 26 almost identical camera modules are installed in the probe.

The cylindrical housings of these cameras with a diameter of 300 mm and a height of 320 mm were thermally treated in our company and the surface quality was optimized using vacuum and ion cleaning. This cleaning process took 1-2 days for each component.

Some of the cases were then given a gold coating. The coating process took place with the components constantly rotating within the coating chamber, which resulted in the most homogeneous gold layer with a thickness of 1 µm being applied.

This coating is intended to thermally stabilize the cameras. This is the only way to achieve the sensitivity needed to search for exoplanets.

The mission is scheduled to start at the end of 2026.

We are already excited to see what results and discoveries will be made about new Earth-like planets!