Padova and Plato

Padova and Plato

October 13 2011, 9:00 AM by Karsten Seiferlin

5/6 September:

PLATO meeting in Padova, Italy. The meeting was scehduled to begin at 11 on Monday morning. When I arrived, I heard the news: It came a bit surprising, but PLATO, it was said, would not be recommended to fly as ESA’s M2 mission, even though the project was in excellent shape, and passed all reviews, while the competitors had several or numerous technical problems and failed reviews. Hmmm… Plato was then really cancelled two weeks later by the SPC (a committee of delegates from ESA’s member states.

Anyway: the meeting turned out to be very short. Having no idea what to do and still under some shock, we started with the planned agenda, and presented everything like "We would have delivered…" "We would have required from you…" – really odd. At lunchtime the zombie parade was over and left me with a sunny afternoon to take photos, and the chance to return home one day early (which I made).