The PLATO science consortium:
A world-wide PLATO science consortium will soon be setup, whose tasks will include the scientific preparation and exploitation of PLATO. In particular, the PLATO science consortium will conduct the following activities, some of them in close collaboration with the PLATO payload consortium:
- assessment of the scientific performances of the PLATO mission,
- preparation of the science programs,
- preparation of input source catalogues,
- preparation of ground based follow-up observations, including high resolution spectroscopy, high precision radial velocity measurements, high angular resolution photometry, interferometric observations, etc...
The PLATO science consortium may include the following members, all of whom have co-signed the PLATO proposal to the Cosmic Vision programme:
The PLATO consortium at of June 2007 (click to enlarge)
The PLATO payload consortium:
A PLATO payload consortium will also be setup soon, whose task will be to organize the work for the design and construction of the payload. The members of this consortium will be laboratories and agencies from ESA member states, with scientific and/or technical expertise in the various elements of the PLATO science and instrumentation.
In addition, international partnership may be developed for some elements of the payload. Preliminary discussions have been initiated with colleagues from the US (under leadership of C. Beichman, Caltech), from India (under leadership of R. Sagar, ARIES), from Brazil (under leadership of E. Janot-Pacheco, U. of Sao Paulo). Recently, interest in a participation to PLATO has also been expressed by chinese colleagues (under leadership of J. Fu, Beijing University).
This document gives a short description of the PLATO payload, with some hints at a possible breakdown of the various payload elements within a payload consortium.