Space Mission to Seek Earth-Like Planets

Administrators of a space mission set for launch Wednesday in Russia say the purpose of the spacecraft is to find new planets.

The mission, which is led by French space agency CNES, employs the Corot spacecraft to search outside the solar system for planets as small as twice the size of earth, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Austria, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Brazil and the European Space Agency are working with CNES on the mission.

We’ve been waiting 25 years to get such a mission into space, Ian Roxburgh, the ESA representative on the Corot scientific committee, told the BBC.

“It will be the first space mission that will be searching for planets around other stars that are of a similar nature to Earth.

We should be able to detect them down to about twice the size of Earth.