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The European Space Agency (ESA) has given the green light to a space telescope that will study the atmospheres of planets outside our Solar System.
The telescope’s mission is to examine the links between a planet’s chemistry and its environment, mapping around 1,000 known planets outside our Solar System, known as exoplanets. The information will provide scientists with a complete picture of what exoplanets are made of, how they formed and how they will evolve.
The Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) survey has undergone a rigorous review process throughout 2020 and is now scheduled to launch in 2029.
With funding from the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA), UK research institutes – including UCL, Cardiff University and the University of Oxford – are playing a vital role in the mission by providing leadership, bringing expertise, hardware and vital software and shaping its goals.
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The RAL Space, the Technology Department and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Astronomical Technology Center also offered essential support.
Once in orbit, Ariel will quickly share her data with the general public, inviting space enthusiasts and budding astronomers to use the data to select targets and characterize stars.
Spectrographs aboard the observatory will study the light filtering through a planet’s atmosphere as it passes through the face of its host star, revealing chemical fingerprints of gases enveloping the body. The instruments will also try to refine estimates of a planet’s temperature.
Ariel will be able to detect the signs of well-known ingredients in the atmosphere of the planets such as water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. For a select number of planets, it will also perform a thorough investigation of their cloud systems and study seasonal and daily atmospheric variations.
“We are the first generation to be able to study planets around other stars,” said Professor Giovanna Tinetti, principal investigator for Ariel at UCL. “Ariel will take this unique opportunity and reveal the nature and history of hundreds of different worlds in our galaxy. We can now embark on the next stage of our work to make this mission a reality. “
About 4,374 worlds have been confirmed in 3,234 systems since the first discoveries of exoplanets in the early 1990s.
This mission will focus on planets that are unlikely to host life as we know it, from extremely hot to temperate, gaseous to rocky. It will also analyze planets in orbit close to their parent stars and those of different masses, particularly those heavier than a few Earth masses.
What does it mean if an exoplanet is “habitable”?
All forms of life we know depend on one fundamental component: liquid water. So, in the pursuit of life, astronomers focus on planets where liquid water might exist, which they call “habitable.”
Each star has a “habitable zone”, also called the “Goldilocks zone”, where it is neither too hot nor too cold. A planet in the habitable zone receives the right amount of energy from the star to support liquid water. A little closer to the star and the water would boil, and further away and it would freeze.
However, this does not guarantee that liquid water exists on a planet in the habitable zone. The planet’s atmosphere may be too dense, further raising the temperature. And even though liquid water exists on the planet, habitable doesn’t mean inhabited.
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