The spacecraft, belonging to the Proteus series, is equipped with a 27-cm diameter afocal telescope and a 4-CCD camera sensitive to tiny variations of the light intensity from stars.
 

The CoRoT instrument will make it possible, with a method called stellar seismology, to probe the inner structure of the stars, as well as to detect many extrasolar planets, by observing the periodic micro-eclipses occurring when these bodies transit in front of their parent star.
 

By its high photometric performances and its observing runs covering five months without interruption, the CoRoT experiment aims to be a pioneer mission in the discovery of telluric extrasolar planets, bodies with properties comparable to those of the rocky planets of the solar system. Its launch was successful on december 27th, 2006.