The Eddington mission was a European Space Agency (ESA) project that planned to search for Earth-like planets, but was cancelled in 2003.
[1] It was named for the noted astronomer Arthur Eddington, who formulated much of the modern theory of stellar atmospheres and stellar structure, popularized Albert Einstein's work in the English language, carried out the first test (gravitational lensing) of the general theory of relativity, and made original contributions to the theory.
[3] Using a single spacecraft in Earth orbit equipped with four telescopes, Eddington was to examine different regions of the sky for intervals of about two months each.
[3] The mission was then planned to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars, pointing continuously at one region of the sky for three years.
[5] Eddington was advocated as the culmination of an international attempt to perform asteroseismology from space.