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PLATO Week 9

PLATO Week 9 took place from the 9th to the 11th of October, 2019. It was hosted by the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), and held at the Management School of Marseille (EMD). More information about the meeting can be found on the meeting's website.

Ahead of the meeting, the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to James Peebles, Michel Mayor, and Didier Queloz. By kickstarting the field of exoplanet research, the discovery of 51 Pegasi b by Mayor and Queloz directly led to the PLATO mission, and all of us in the PSM offer our congratulations to the two of them for their well-deserved prize.

Group picture from PLATO Week 9, held in Marseille, France from 9th to 11th October 2019.

The PMC plenum on Wednesday morning featured a PSM status update by Paul A. Wilson from the PSM Office. This was followed by the first of two PDC/PSM plenums. Other sessions of interest to the PSM included:

  • PCOT + L0/L1 pipeline
  • WP36 (EAS) / WP37 (SAS)
  • F-CAM data science
  • Product definition
  • DPA-WG
  • WP36 (EAS) / WP11 (Exoplanet Science)

A particularly important topic of discussion during this meeting was the review schedule for the PSM. The first ESA review for the Ground Segment (of which PSM is a part) is the GSRQR in Q4 2021. However, before then we have contributions to make to the Mission-PDR in Q2 2020, and will be holding some internal reviews with the PDC to ensure that we are ready for the GSRQR. More information about these reviews is available through SCIP.

A full set of documents from PLATO Week 9 can be downloaded from the PLATO Sharepoint (sign-in required). They are also being added to the PMC's SCIP environment (sign-in required).