More lab products under development for space at Queen's

Queen's University Belfast is working on the lab products required to support a space mission tasked with discovering planets in other solar systems that might support life.

Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars, or PLATO, is one of three proposals being considered by the European Space Agency.

Together they have been allocated £3.65 million in development funding - but only two will ultimately make it into space.

PLATO would see light-detecting lab products sent into space to look for fractional dimming in the light from distant stars.

This occurs as planets orbit in front of them - and can discover worlds in the "habitable zone" where water might exist in a given solar system.

Once found, these worlds would provide a target to be scanned for the possible existence of biological lifeforms.

The news comes in the same week that the European Space Agency announced five products - including two spectrometers, a radiometer, a stereo colour imager and a multi-spectral camera - to be sent to Mars on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in 2016.