PLATO Week 10 will now be held remotely from the 26th to 28th of May 2020.

PW10 is being organised by the Konkoly Observatory of the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences and the PMC.
Owing to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, the decision has been made to move the meeting online; the conference will be conducted using WebEx (access provided by ESA).

The schedule for the meeting has been updated following this change. Please go to the PLATO Week 10 website for more details. A detailed agenda for the meeting will be available nearer the time.

The first major review of PSM activity, the L2/L3 Requirements Review, was closed-out on the 9th of March 2020.

This internal review, which was run completely by the PLATO Mission Consortium, assessed the requirements for the L2 & L3 data processing pipelines, the systems that take PLATO light curves and identify planetary candidates, confirm planetary systems, and derive stellar properties.

Although a large number of action items remain to be completed, this review is considered a success by all involved. Thank you to everyone who took part, in any capacity.

The first major review of PSM activity, the L2/L3 Requirements Review, successfully kicked-off on Friday 29th November. This internal review, which is run completely by the PLATO Mission Consortium and has only limited input from ESA, is assessing the requirements for the L2 & L3 data processing pipelines, the systems that take PLATO light curves and identify planetary candidates, confirm planetary systems, and derive stellar properties.

The initial phase of the review concludes on the 20th of December, and the review runs until the end of February 2020.

The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Göttingen, Germany, invites applications for a Database Software Developer to work for the PLATO Data Centre (PDC). The position is available for an initial period starting as soon as possible until 31st March 2022, with the possibility of an extension that is contingent upon performance and project funding.

Please send your CV and application letter in English (certificates and reference letters may be in German) as one PDF file to burston@mps.mpg.de with the subject line “PDC-DB-sciprog-20191113”. Applications will be reviewed from the 1st December 2019 until the position is filled.

For information, please click the title of this news item.

The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), Göttingen, Germany, invites applications for a Database Software Developer to work for the PLATO Data Centre (PDC). The position is available for an initial period starting as soon as possible until 31st March 2022, with the possibility of an extension that is contingent upon performance and project funding.

Please send your CV and application letter in English (certificates and reference letters may be in German) as one PDF file to burston@mps.mpg.de with the subject line “PDC-DB-swdev-13112019”. Applications will be reviewed from the 1st December 2019 until the position is filled.

For information, please click the title of this news item.

PLATO Week 9 will be taking place from the 9th to the 11th October 2019, and will be held in Marseille, France.

As usual, the meeting will be preceded by an ESA progress meeting (invitation only).

More details are available on the PW9 website.

The LESIA (http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/) is strongly committed to PLATO, both in terms of embedded software, the specification of on-board and on-ground processing algorithms, and the scientific preparation of the mission. As part of the mission development phase, one of the tasks to be carried out concerns the study and specification of all on-ground algorithms. These specifications are indeed essential to begin with the development of the on-ground data processing chains. This work is conducted under the responsibility of the LESIA (respectively R. Samadi) in the framework of WP 32 (a component of the Plato Data Center, PDC). It involves many collaborators in close contact with the team responsible for the development of the on-ground software at the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen (Germany).

At this stage of the project, the main components of the on-ground data processing chains are identified. However, the corresponding algorithms have to be studied in detail and complete evaluations of the expected performances have to be made. Finally, it will be necessary to translate the algorithms, currently in the form of detailed specifications, into a set of documents on the basis of which the PLATO Data Center (PDC) team will then develop the codes and perform the validation and integration tests.

The PLATO mission consortium has a new website - https://platomission.com/

The new website provides an overview of the PLATO mission, information about the different groups involved, science goals and requirements, development work, mission timeline, etc.

For general information about PLATO, please use the new website. PSM-specific news and updates will continue to be made available through this website.

Brief reports for PLATO Week 4 (Summer 2017) and PLATO Week 5 (Autumn 2017) are now available through the Meetings page. Both PLATO Weeks included a large number of sessions that were relevant to the PSM.

The presentations from these meetings are available from the PLATO Sharepoint (sign-in required). Those relevant to the PSM will be made available through the Meeting Documents page (PSM members only, sign-in required).

The 10th meeting of the DPA-WG is taking place on October 11th and 12th, at Observatoire de Paris. Attendance is by invitation only.

The Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), Universidade do Porto, Portugal will organise the fifth PLATO Week that is scheduled from 24/10/2017 to 26/10/2017. For questions concerning the local organisation please contact pw05@iastro.pt. Please note that attendance is by invitation only.

For more information, please see the meeting website.

ESA's Science Programme Committee have agreed to adopt PLATO into the Science Programme moving forwards. Mission adoption is a big milestone for PLATO, and marks the move from a blueprint mission into a fully-realised concern.

This decision is just reward for all of the hard work put in by the PLATO team over the last several years.

PLATO Week 4 will be hosted at the Albanova University Centre, Stockholm, Sweden. It will be taking place between the 20th and 22nd of June 2017. Attendance is by invitation only.

For more details, please see the meeting's website.

PLATO Week 3 took place at MPSSR in Göttingen between the 13th and 15th of March 2017. There were many sessions of relevance to the PSM:

• An overview of PSM activities since the last meeting, presented by the PSM Coordinator, Don Pollacco.
• A joint PSM-PDC plenary session, which included presentations on the L1 on-ground processing chain, Exoplanet Science and Stellar Science requirements on L1 data, and a working model for interactions between the two bodies.
• A splinter session on candidate ranking and follow-up
• A splinter session on PMC System Wide tools, with reference to PSM tools for content management, version control, action items, and requirement tracking moving forwards.
• A splinter session on the PDC Database organisation
• A splinter session on support tools for data analysis.

The presentations from these sessions, and from all of the other sessions at PLATO Week 3, can be found at the meeting's webpage, and through the detailed information for this news item.

PLATO Week 3 will be hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany. It will be taking place between the 13th and 15th of March. Attendance is by invitation only.

UPDATE: Information regarding the meeting can be found at the meeting's website.

PLATO Week 2 took place at ASI in Rome between the 8th and 10th of November 2016. The PSM held several joint sessions with the PDC, during which discussions focussed on the high-level schedule for developing the on-ground data processing pipeline.

Minutes for the PSM-PDC sessions can be found on the Publications page, along with the slides that were shown during the meeting.

The second PLATO Week will be held from the 8th to the 10th of November at the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) in Rome. Detailed information can be found on the meeting's webpage (click the news item title).

The Local Organizer is Isabella Pagano: ipa@ct.inaf.it.

If you are intending to come to the meeting, please register using the link on the webpage at least 2 weeks before the meeting. Registration is mandatory.

The University of Warwick (UK) will be hosting the PLATO Mission Conference 2017: exoplanets in the PLATO era. The conference will take place between the 5th and 7th of September 2017. Further details to come.

The University of Leuven is hosting the first ever PLATO Week between 18.07.16 and 20.07.16

Further information can be found at the webpage (click the news item heading)