Artist impression of Cheops
Credits: University of Bern
Studying planets around other stars will be the focus of the new small
Science Programme mission, Cheops, ESA announced today. Its launch is
expected in 2017.
Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – will target nearby, bright stars already known to have planets orbiting around them.
Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – will target nearby, bright stars already known to have planets orbiting around them.
Through high-precision monitoring of the star’s brightness, scientists
will search for the telltale signs of a ‘transit’ as a planet passes
briefly across its face.
In turn, this will allow an accurate measurement of the radius of the
planet. For those planets with a known mass, the density will be
revealed, providing an indication of the internal structure.
These key parameters will help scientists to understand the formation of
planets from a few times the mass of the Earth – ‘super-Earths’ – up to
Neptune-sized worlds.
It will also identify planets with significant atmospheres and constrain
the migration of planets during the formation and evolution of their
parent systems.
One of the methods for detecting exoplanets is to look for the drop in
brightness they cause when they pass in front of their parent star. Such
a celestial alignment is known as a planetary transit.
Credits: CNES
Cheops is the first of a possible new class of small missions to be developed as part of ESA’s Science Programme.
“By concentrating on specific known exoplanet host stars, Cheops will
enable scientists to conduct comparative studies of planets down to the
mass of Earth with a precision that simply cannot be achieved from the
ground,” said Professor Alvaro Giménez-Cañete, ESA Director of Science
and Robotic Exploration.
“The mission was selected from 26 proposals submitted in response to the
Call for Small Missions in March, highlighting the strong interest of
the scientific community in dedicated, quick-turnaround missions
focusing on key open issues in space science.”
Possible future small missions in the Science Programme should be low
cost and rapidly developed, in order to offer greater flexibility in
response to new ideas from the scientific community.
With a dedicated science focus, they would provide a natural complement
to the broader Medium- and Large-class missions of ESA’s Science
Programme.
Cheops will be implemented as a partnership between ESA and Switzerland,
with a number of other ESA Member States delivering substantial
contributions.
“This continues the 40-year success story of Swiss scientists and
industry at the forefront of space science,” said Professor Willy Benz,
Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern.
The mission will also provide unique targets for more detailed studies
of exoplanet atmospheres by the next generation of telescopes now being
built, such as the ground-based European Extremely Large Telescope and
the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Cheops will operate in a Sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit at an altitude
of 800 km. It has a planned mission lifetime of 3.5 years and part of
the observing time will be open to the wider scientific community.
For further information, please contact:
ESA Media Relations Office
Communication Department
Tel: + 33 1 53 69 72 99
Fax: + 33 1 53 69 76 90
Email: media@esa.int
ESA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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