The European Space Agency's Science Programme Committee has selected ARIEL as its fourth medium-class mission for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch in mid-2028, and will focus on studying the atmospheres of exoplanets:
ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission, was selected by ESA today as part of its Cosmic Vision plan. [...] ARIEL will address fundamental questions on what exoplanets are made of and how planetary systems form and evolve by investigating the atmospheres of hundreds of planets orbiting different types of stars, enabling the diversity of properties of both individual planets as well as within populations to be assessed.
[...] The mission will focus on warm and hot planets, ranging from super-Earths to gas giants orbiting close to their parent stars, taking advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres to decipher their bulk composition. ARIEL will measure the chemical fingerprints of the atmospheres as the planet crosses in front of its host star, observing the amount of dimming at a precision level of 10–100 parts per million relative to the star.
The UK will lead the mission:
Ariel is likely to cost Esa about €460m (£405m) for the spacecraft chassis, the launch vehicle and operations. As is customary for science missions like this, the agency's individual member states pick up the cost of the scientific payload.
The UK will have the technical lead on the project and the instrumentation therefore will be assembled at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire. Dr Graham Turnock, the chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "It is thanks to the world-leading skills of our innovative space community that a UK-led consortium has been chosen to take forward the next ESA science mission. This demonstrates what a vital role we continue to play in European collaboration on research in space."
ARIEL is expected to observe at least 500-1,000 exoplanets, compared to 150-200 for the James Webb Space Telescope during its first five years. Two other European exoplanet missions, CHEOPS and PLATO, are scheduled to launch in 2018 and 2026 respectively.
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The European Space Agency has selected three candidates for the fifth medium-class Cosmic Vision mission:
A high-energy survey of the early Universe, an infrared observatory to study the formation of stars, planets and galaxies, and a Venus orbiter are to be considered for ESA's fifth medium class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme, with a planned launch date in 2032.
The three candidates, the Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (Theseus), the SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (Spica), and the EnVision mission to Venus were selected from 25 proposals put forward by the scientific community.
Theseus, Spica and EnVision will be studied in parallel and a final decision is expected in 2021.
THESEUS would study gamma-ray bursts and x-ray emissions from the early universe, with the goal of making a complete census of gamma-ray bursts from the universe's first billion years.
SPICA would cover longer infrared wavelengths (12 µm "mid-infrared" to 230 µm "far-infrared") than the James Webb Space Telescope (0.6 µm "orange" to 28.5 µm "mid-infrared"), with two orders of magnitude more sensitivity than the Spitzer and Herschel infrared telescopes. The mission would be a collaboration between the ESA and Japan's JAXA.
EnVision would orbit Venus and look for volcanic, tectonic, and atmospheric changes.
Also at EarthSky.
Previously: ESA Selects ARIEL Exoplanet Survey as a Medium Class Mission
Europe's launch of space telescope called off at last minute
Europe's space agency was planning to send a new telescope to study far-off planets into space Tuesday but the launch was called off at the last minute.
A spokesperson for the European Space Agency (ESA) said the launch would not go ahead today because of a problem with the launch device.
Called CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite), the telescope was due to be launched aboard a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana early Tuesday. The launch had been due to be livestreamed on the ESA's website. During final countdown operations, the Soyuz launcher's automated sequence was interrupted at 1 hour 25 minutes before liftoff, Arianespace, the satellite company operating the launch, said in a statement. The new launch date will be announced as soon as possible, it added.
The telescope's mission is to observe individual stars already known to host exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- focusing on planets sized in the Earth to Neptune range. To date, 4,143 planets have been discovered around stars other than the sun, ESA said.
CHEOPS is a small space telescope with a cost cap of €50 million. It will measure the radii of previously discovered exoplanets, providing targets for future missions.
See also: Europe's Cheops telescope will profile distant planets
Related: PLATO Exoplanet Observatory Approved by ESA
ESA Selects ARIEL Exoplanet Survey as a Medium Class Mission
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Friday March 23 2018, @06:51AM (1 child)
yeah. So what?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 23 2018, @03:31PM
Long dead guy from far-away shithole country ... yeah, so what?