French painter of Italian landscapes (1796-1875)

CoRoT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transits) is a space mission led by the French Space Agency (CNES) in conjunction with the European Space Agency and other international partners. The primary objective of CoRoT will be to search for extrasolar planets, particularly those of large terrestrial size. It was launched at 14:28 GMT on December 27, 2006, atop a Soyuz 2.1b carrier rocket.http://smsc.cnes.fr/COROT/GP_actualite.htmhttp://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/index.html and reported first light on January 18, 2007http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/11/1/13/1?rss=2.0.