Tag: Ariel

Europe’s Exoplanet Satellite Completes Final Tests

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Artist impression of Cheops, the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, with an exoplanet system in the background. (Credit: ESA/ATG medialab)

MADRID (ESA PR) — ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, was recently declared ready to fly after completing a series of final spacecraft tests.

Cheops will lift off as a secondary passenger on a Soyuz-Fregat rocket launching from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite will be stored at the Airbus Defence and Space facility in Madrid for a few months before being shipped to the launch site, targeting the launch time slot between 15 October and 14 November in 2019.
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Gilmour Space Unveils One Vision Rocket Ahead of Suborbital Test Launch

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One Vision Booster. (Credit: Gilmour Space)

Gold Coast, QLD — Australian rocket company, Gilmour Space Technologies, today unveiled its ‘One Vision’ rocket which it plans to launch later this month, and conducted a live demonstration of its automated mobile launcher, the first of its kind in Australia.

“One Vision is a scaled version of our Ariel sounding rocket, and its main objective will be to flight-test our proprietary hybrid rocket engine for commercial orbital launches starting in 2020,” said the company’s CEO & Founder, Adam Gilmour.

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UK Team to Lead European Mission to Study New Planets

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ARIEL spacecraft (Credit: ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office)

SWINDON, England (UKSA PR) — A multi-million pound European mission to study newly discovered planets will be led by University College London, supported by investment from the UK Space Agency.

The ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) mission was selected today as the next European Space Agency (ESA) science mission, putting UK leadership at the heart of research into planets that lie outside our solar system – exoplanets.

Thousands of exoplanets have now been discovered with a huge diversity of masses, sizes and orbits, but very little is known about their chemical composition, formation, or their evolutionary links to their host stars.

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ESA’s Next Science Mission to Focus on Nature of Exoplanets

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Hot exoplanet (Credit: ESA/ATG medialab, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO )

PARIS (ESA PR) — The nature of planets orbiting stars in other systems will be the focus for ESA’s fourth medium-class science mission, to be launched in mid 2028.

Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission, was selected by ESA today as part of its Cosmic Vision plan.
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