Ariel: Enabling planetary science across light-years

Abstract

<p>Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was adopted as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme to be launched in 2029. During its 4-year mission, Ariel will study what exoplanets are made of, how they formed and how they evolve, by surveying a diverse sample of about 1000 extrasolar planets, simultaneously in visible and infrared wavelengths. It is the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of hundreds of transiting exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System. The payload consists of an off-axis Cassegrain telescope (primary mirror 1100 mm x 730 mm ellipse) and two separate instruments (FGS and AIRS) covering simultaneously 0.5-7.8 micron spectral range. The satellite is best placed into an L2 orbit to maximise the thermal stability and the field of regard. The payload module is passively cooled via a series of V-Groove radiators; the detectors for the AIRS are the only items that require active cooling via an active Ne JT cooler. The Ariel payload is developed by a consortium of more than 50 institutes from 16 ESA countries, which include the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and a NASA contribution.</p> <p>This presentation provides an overall summary of the science and instrument design for Ariel and presents the many activities that the Ariel team have planned to engage the science community at large and the public prior to launch. These include the Ariel Dry-Run program and citizen-science programs such as ExoClock and the Ariel Data Challenges.</p>

Teledyne imaging sensors' recent contributions to astronomy, earth science, and planetary science

“…Ariel (Tinetti et al 2020) (Atmospheric Remote‐Sensing Infrared Large‐survey) is an ESA‐funded M‐class mission that will perform a chemical census of the atmospheres of about 1000 exoplanets. An artist's concept of the Ariel spacecraft and payload are shown in Figure 22.…”

YunMa: Enabling Spectral Retrievals of Exoplanetary Clouds

“…The data provided by the next-generation telescopes will be greatly superior in quality and quantity, allowing us to obtain more stringent constraints to our understanding of clouds in exoplanetary atmospheres. Transit spectra of exoplanets recorded from space by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST; 0.6-28.3 μm, Gardner et al 2006;Greene et al 2016;Bean et al 2018), Ariel (0.5-7.8 μm, Tinetti et al 2018Tinetti et al , 2021, and Twinkle (0.5-4.5 μm, Edwards et al 2019) at relatively high spectral resolution and/or broad wavelength coverage will open the possibility of integrating self-consistent, cloud microphysics approaches into atmospheric retrieval codes. A good example of such models is ARCiS (Ormel & Min 2019;Min et al 2020), which simulates cloud formation from diffusion processes and parametric coagulation.…”