"You take a million, billion tonnes of flaming inferno and turn it into 'twinkle, twinkle little star' ..."

Sun, 21 Oct 2007

Whither Darwin/ Terrestrial Planet Finder ?

I see from the BBC and /. that ESA has made its choices in Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. It appears that Darwin did not make the cut.

Istead, PLATO and SPICA seem to be holding the banner for exoplanetary exploration.

Can someone closer to the decision-making process comment? What does this mean for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder? There were considerations of merging Darwin and TPF; does the project live as TPF, or was the task of imaging an exoplanet left to JWST ?