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NEAT: a space born astrometric mission for the detection and characterization of nearby habitable planetary systems

The NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) mission is a proposal submitted to ESA for its 2010 call for M-size mission within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan. The main scientific goal of the NEAT mission is to detect and characterize planetary systems in an exhaustive way down to 1 Earth mass in the habitable zone and further away, around nearby stars for F, G, and K spectral types. This survey would provide the actual planetary masses, the full characterization of the orbits including their inclination, for all the components of the planetary system down to that mass limit. NEAT will continue the work performed by Hipparcos and Gaia by reaching a precision that is improved by two orders of magnitude on pointed targets.