In this artist’s imprint of the exoplanet system a hot planet transports in front of its parent star. Credit: ESA / ATG MediaLab
E.S.A. exoplanet Mission Aerial, scheduled for launch in 2029, has moved from the study to the implementation phase, which will lead to the selection of an industrial contractor to build the spacecraft.
Ariel, an atmospheric remote sensing infrared exoplanet l-t-survey mission, addresses a key theme of ESA’s Cosmic Vision program: What are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life? Aerial will study how they are formed from exoplanets, how they form and evolve, by simultaneously surveying diverse samples of the atmosphere of approximately 1000 planets in visible and infrared wavelengths.
It is the first mission dedicated to measuring chemical composition and thermal compositions of exoplanets, connecting them to the atmosphere of the host star. How this planet’s chemistry is connected to the environment where it happened, or the type of host constellation that drives the planet’s evolutionary physics and chemistry will fill a significant gap in our knowledge.
Observations of these worlds will provide insights into the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation and their subsequent evolution, in the process also helping us to understand how our solar system fits into the larger picture of the universe as a whole.
In 2018, Ariel was selected as a middle-class science mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Plan. It was “adopted” by the ESA during the agency’s Science Program Committee meeting on November 12, paving the way for construction.
“Aerial will enable planetary science beyond the boundaries of our own solar system,” says Gunther Hassinger, ESA’s director of science. “The adoption of Ariel cementes ESA’s commitment to exoplanet research and will ensure that European astronomers remain at the forefront of this revolutionary field for decades to come.”
Exoplanet mission timeline. The first discoveries of exoplanets by land-based observatories in the 1990s completely changed our view of the solar system and opened up new areas of research that continue to this day. This infographic highlights the main space-based contributors in the field, including not only exoplanet-dedicated missions, but exoplanet-sensitive missions, past, present and future. Credit: ESA
Aerial A.S.A. The third will be a dedicated exoplanet mission that will begin over a ten-year period, with each mission addressing a specific aspect of exoplanet science. Launched in December 2019, the Exoplanet Satellite, featuring Chaps, is already producing world-class science. Plates, planetary transits and oscillations of stellar missions will be launched in 2026 to detect and study extracellular planetary systems, with special emphasis on rocky planets around stars like the Sun in habitable zone – distances from stars where liquid water exists on the planet’s surface. Is. Ariel, planned to launch in 2029, will focus on warmer planets, orbiting closer to their parent stars, from super-atheists to gas giants, taking advantage of their well-mixed atmosphere to explain their bulk formation.
In the coming months, the industry will be asked to bid for the supply of spacecraft hardware for Ariel. Around the summer of next year, a major industrial contractor will be selected to build it.
The mission’s payload module, which includes a meter-class cryogenic telescope and related science instruments, has been provided by the Aerial Mission Consortium. The Union consists of more than 50 organizations from 17 European countries. NASA Also contributes to payload.
“After an intensive period on the initial design concepts and the integration of the techniques needed to demonstrate the feasibility of the mission, we are ready to move Ariel forward to the implementation stage,” says Ludovic Pug, ESA’s Aerial Studies Manager.
The telescope’s spectrometer will measure the chemical fingerprints of any planet as it passes through its front side – ‘transitions’ – its host constellation or behind it – a ‘spy’. This measure will also allow astronomers to observe the opacity of the host star through the planet with an accuracy of 10-100 parts per million relative to the star.
Aerial will be able to detect signs of known elements such as water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane in the planet’s atmosphere. It will also find more foreign metal compounds to explain the overall chemical atmosphere of distant solar systems. For a number of planets, Ariel will also conduct a survey of their cloud systems and study seasonal and daily atmospheric variations.
“With Ariel we will take this exoplanet characteristic to the next level by studying this distant world, both as individuals and, importantly, as a population,” says Gauran Pilbrat, an aerospace study scientist at ESA.
“The chemical calculations of our hundreds of solar systems will help us understand each planet in terms of the chemical atmosphere and composition of the host star, and in turn help us better understand our own cosmic neighborhood,” adds Theresa Luftinger, ESA’s aerial project scientist. Aerial project scientist Theresa Luftinger adds.
“We look forward to entering the implementation phase of the Aerial Mission,” said Jean Christophe Salvignol, ESA’s Aerial Project Manager. “We are moving towards maximum spacecraft design for answers to fundamental questions about our place in the universe.”
Ariel French plans to launch ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket from the European spaceport in Cairo, Guyana. It will operate on the initial four-year mission to the second Sun-Earth luggage point, L2, 1.5 million kilometers straight from Earth to the rear of Earth. The comet interceptor mission, led by ESA, will distribute rides in space.
