Here is a bit more on this telescope idea and the professor leading the project:

Professor Jonathan Tennyson of University College London describes his thoughts on the announcement of Twinkle Space Mission at The Royal Astronomical Society February 6th, 2015.

Twinkle is a small, low-cost mission that will use spectroscopy to decode the light from hundreds of extrasolar planets. Twinkle will be able to reveal, for the first time, the chemical composition, weather and history of worlds orbiting distant stars. The Twinkle satellite will be built in the UK and launched into a low-Earth orbit within 3 to 4 years, using a platform designed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and instrumentation led by UCL.

If they are able to pull this off within budget, this sounds like an awesome idea.  What do you think?  Feel free to comment.

thanks to space.com for the great info

thanks to NASA for the great info