Cap on the planets for the European Space Agency
Selection of the ESA ARIEL Space Mission

The program committee of the European Space Agency has just selected the ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) mission as the 4th intermediate class mission of the "Cosmic Vision" program with a budget of 450 million euros . ARIEL will be launched from the Kourou base in French Guiana in May 2028 and will be placed in orbit at the Lagrange L2 point, located 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth. ARIEL is a space telescope that will systematically probe the atmospheres of a thousand extrasolar planets, from gas giants to rocky planets, whether hot or temperate, around stars of different types. ARIEL will measure the composition and structure of planetary atmospheres, constrain the nature of planetary cores, detect the presence of clouds, and investigate interactions with the host star.

 

Contact CEA : Pierre-Olivier LAGAGE 

 

Scientific contacts  :
Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris  (beaulieu@iap.fr)
Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Département d’Astrophysique au CEA-Irfu, UMR AIM Paris-Saclay (Pierre-Olivier.lagage@cea.fr)
Pierre  Drossart, LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, PSL, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris-Diderot
Marc Ollivier, Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS), CNRS / Université Paris-Sud / Université Paris-Saclay (marc.ollivier@ias.u-psud.fr)

See : the ESA Press Release (20 March 2018)

Voir également : ARIEL (sur le site DAp-CEA)
                          ARIEL Space mission website
                          ESA-ESTEC website
                          Evaluation report ARIEL mission (Mars 2017, PDF)

 
#4297 - Last update : 02/04 2019

 

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