One-year launch anniversary of CHEOPS

On December 18, 2019 CHEOPS lifts off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana © ESA - S. Corvaja - In its first year in orbit, the CHEOPS space telescope has already revealed details of one of the most extreme exoplanets and showed its maneuverability by evading space debris. CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the aegis of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva. Since its launch last year from the European Space Agency (ESA)'s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on December 18 the CHEOPS telescope in Earth's orbit has demonstrated its functionality and precision beyond expectations. That it would ever to get to that point, was never a certainty, as it was a pioneering project in different aspects. First Swiss-led ESA space mission. From 26 project proposals, CHEOPS was selected as ESA's so-called first small 'S-class mission' back in 2012. The conditions of such a mission were that it had to be realized within a few years and would not cost ESA more than 50 million euro.