A powerful planet-finding space telescope capable of discovering twin Earths is to be launched by the European Space Agency in 2026. Plato will search several hundreds of thousands of stars looking for rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars, including those that could be habitable.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Oxford Times. </s> A new observatory to be built and sent into deep-space to search out habitable planets has been approved by the European Space Agency.

Dubbed PLATO, the mission may fundamentally change what humanity believes of its place in the universe.

PLATO is going to "address fundamental questions such as 'how common are Earth-like planets?' and 'is our solar system unusual or even unique?'," according to the University of Warwick, whose scientists are involved in the project.

It "could eventually even lead to the detection of extra-terrestrial life," the university added.

Following a meeting of the European Space Agency's committee in Madrid, the mission has now received the official green light, meaning it will now move from the blueprint phase into proper construction.

Advertisement

It is expected to cost €600m (£536m).

Image: An artist's impression of a habitable exoplanet

The spacecraft is going to have 26 telescopes and will join NASA's Kepler observatory as a spacecraft dedicated to finding exoplanets, planets revolving around stars other than our Sun.

Kepler was launched in 2009 and has found more than 3,400 exoplanets to-date.

NASA recently stated that Kepler had discovered 10 potentially habitable exoplanets.

PLATO will be launched nearly one million miles away from Earth in 2026, more than four times further away than the moon.

It will scan a huge area of the sky, searching for the slight dips in light that takes place when a planet "transits" between the star and the telescope observing it. </s> LONDON, March 21 (APP):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, a United Kingdom government statement issued here said.

 The ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) mission was selected on Wednesday 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.

 ARIEL will carry out the first ever large-scale survey of exoplanets specifically to examine their atmospheres. It will study hot, Jupiter-size planets close to their stars, and so will help scientists understand the key processes which form planetary systems and affect how they evolve.

 Science Minister Sam Gyimah said: “Space is our final frontier and, working with UCL, we want

 to be at the forefront of discovering new planets. British involvement in this incredibly exciting new

 mission demonstrates how integral our world-leading scientific expertise is in solving some of

 space’s greatest mysteries.

 “The UK is a go-to destination for research and discovery, being home to some of the brightest

 and best talents. Through our modern Industrial Strategy and record funding for R&D, increasing investment to around £12 billion by 2021, we will continue to do all we can to boost our world-leading science sector and build a Britain fit for the future.”

 ESA’s Science Programme Committee chose ARIEL for the fourth medium-class science mission (M4) in its Cosmic Vision Programme. Subject to further review, the UK Space Agency will provide a multi-million-pound investment package to support UK leadership of the project.

 Dr Graham Turnock, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “It is thanks to the world-leading skills of our innovative space community that a UK-led consortium has been chosen to take forward the next ESA science mission. This demonstrates what a vital role we continue to play in European collaboration on research in space.

 “The ARIEL mission is a prime example of the scientific innovation underpinning the wider

 economy. It relies on the UK’s science and engineering expertise, which is at the forefront of the Government’s Industrial Strategy.”

 The mission’s Principal Investigator is Professor Giovanna Tinetti, from University College

 London, who will lead the mission science. STFC RAL Space will manage the overall European consortium building the payload, which will be assembled and tested in Harwell, Oxfordshire. Other

 UK involvement will come from Cardiff University, Oxford University, and the UK Astronomy

 Technology Centre. UK industry can also expect to be involved in the satellite’s construction and operations.

 Prof Giovanna Tinetti of UCL said: “Although we’ve now discovered around 3800 planets orbiting other stars, the nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious. ARIEL will study a statistically large sample of exoplanets to give us a truly representative picture of what these planets are like.

 This will enable us to answer questions about how the chemistry of a planet links to the environment

 in which it forms, and how its birth and evolution are affected by its parent star.”

 The ARIEL Consortium Project Manager, Paul Eccleston, of STFC RAL Space, said: “It is

 wonderful news that ESA has selected ARIEL for the next medium-class science mission. The team

 are very excited to have the opportunity to realize the mission we’ve been developing for the last two years.

 ARIEL will revolutionize our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve, helping

 us put our own solar system into context and compare it to our neighbors in the galaxy.”

 The UK’s central roles in ARIEL build on our international leadership in astronomy and planetary science, and will complement the science being delivered by the European Space Agency’s Gaia

 and PLATO missions, and by the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope, all missions with major

 UK involvement. </s> The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully launched its newest satellite into orbit from Europe's Space Port in Kourou, French Guiana.

It is the second satellite launched to join a constellation that forms the European Data Relay System (EDRS), which enables users to observe the Earth almost in real-time, helping to accelerate response times in emergencies.

It will take up position above Europe's low-Earth orbiting observation satellites, enabling the overall constellation to maintain an almost constant connection. Previously, these low orbiting satellites could only transmit information when in direct line-of-sight with their ground stations, which could lead to delays of up to 90 minutes in the transfer of images.

However, the new EDRS satellites can beam information back to Earth in almost real-time, which could prove pivotal during disaster recovery and extreme weather events.

The latest satellite was launched by the Ariane 5 heavy launcher rocket. The Ariane-generation spacecraft has long been the workhorse for Europe in the global space race, launching missions for over 30 years.

The ESA, which was created in 1975, has 22 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Slovenia is an Associate Member.

The organisation develops the launchers, spacecraft and ground facilities needed for Europe's participation in global space activities. It is working in particular with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as well as with Eumetsat for the development of meteorological missions. </s> British scientists are to play a leading role in a new European Space Agency (Esa) mission to study the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system.

The Ariel space telescope, due to be launched in 2028, will spend four years observing 1,000 “exoplanets” orbiting distant stars.

It will carry out the first large-scale survey of exoplanet atmospheric chemistry, focusing on warm and hot worlds orbiting close to their parent stars.

Esa has announced that Ariel will be its next medium class science mission.

Ariel’s principal investigator, Professor Giovanna Tinetti, from University College London, said: “Although we’ve now discovered around 3,800 planets orbiting other stars, the nature of these exoplanets remains largely mysterious.

“Ariel will study a statistically large sample of exoplanets to give us a truly representative picture of what these planets are like. This will enable us to answer questions about how the chemistry of a planet links to the environment in which it forms, and how its birth and evolution are affected by its parent star.”

Ariel will be placed in orbit around Lagrange Point 2 (ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office/PA)

Ariel stands for Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey. It was developed by a consortium of more than 60 institutes from 15 Esa member states, including the UK.

The spacecraft will be launched from Kourou in French Guiana and stationed at Lagrange Point 2 (L2), an orbital “parking spot” 1.5 million kilometres (0.9 million miles) away where the gravity of the Earth and sun balance out.

Science minister Sam Gyimah said: “Space is our final frontier and, working with UCL, we want to be at the forefront of discovering new planets.

“British involvement in this incredibly exciting new mission demonstrates how integral our world-leading scientific expertise is in solving some of space’s greatest mysteries.” </s> A British-built spacecraft fitted with Star Trek-style “impulse engines” is on its way to Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

BepiColombo blasted into space from the European space port at Kourou, French Guiana, at about 2.45am UK time on Saturday. It was carried on top of an Ariane 5, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) most powerful rocket.

After a tense countdown in French, the rocket rose slowly above a ball of orange flame and thundered into the sky before disappearing into cloud.

Experts say BepiColombo could not only shed light on the mysteries of our neighbourhood’s smallest planet, but also offer new insights into how the solar system formed and even provide vital clues as to whether planets found orbiting other stars – so-called exoplanets – could be habitable.

“If we want to understand our Earth and how life can [begin] on Earth and maybe on other planets, we have to understand our solar system,” said Joe Zender, the deputy project scientist for BepiColombo.

Much progress has been made in the matter, Zender said, but there is a snag. “There is one problem really, which is Mercury. Mercury doesn’t fit.”

Among the puzzles is the planet’s surprisingly high density and that it is thought to have a core that is at least partly molten. With some exoplanets orbiting very close to stars cooler than our own, finding out more about the first rock from our sun has become a pressing matter.

The BepiColombo mission is a €1.6bn (£1.4bn) joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese space agency, Jaxa.

The mission has a hefty price tag, but is arguably something of a bargain because BepiColombo involves not one orbiter but two. Once the spacecraft has been delivered into orbit around Mercury by the ESA-built Mercury transfer module, it will split to lose a protective sunshield and release the Mercury magnetospheric orbiter, built by Jaxa, and the Mercury planetary orbiter, built by ESA.

Mercury is only 58m km from the sun, but it has rarely been in the spotlight. Just wo previous missions have examined the planet’s properties – Nasa’s Mariner 10 probe, launched in 1973, and the more recent Messenger mission, which launched in 2004.

The latest endeavour takes its named from the late Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, a professor at the University of Padua who was a key figure in devising Mariner 10’s Mercury flybys.

ESA’s BepiColombo Mercury mission thrives on ambition and co-operation Read more

Both previous missions threw up intriguing results, including that Mercury has a magnetic field. This was a surprise given its leisurely pace of rotation – it takes 59 Earth days to spin on its axis – and the idea that because of its small size, the planet’s core would have cooled and become solid, precluding the existence of a magnetic field. Mercury’s magnetic field is also offset by 20% of the planet’s radius, meaning certain features at the south pole are different to those at the north.

Mercury was also found to have an exosphere, a very thin layer above the surface composed of atoms and molecules that have come from the crust and solar wind.

Before BepiColombo can examine such phenomena, however, it must negotiate two major hurdles.

“The heat is really severe, 450C on one side, but don’t forget the other side is -180C,” said Dr Suzanne Imber, of the University of Leicester, who is a co-investigator on MIXS – one of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s 11 instruments – and also worked on Messenger. Our spacecraft “is going from one to the other over a few tens of minutes … our instruments have to operate around room temperature.”

The Japanese orbiter will spin 15 times a minute to avoid being toasted, like a kebab on a barbecue, while the European orbiter will be wrapped in a special multi-layer blanket and have a radiator for protection.

Getting to Mercury is also a head-scratcher. “Mercury is a small body close to the sun, so you could fly straight towards Mercury and get there in a few months, but you can’t stop because the sun’s gravity sucks you in,” said Imber.

The answer is to arrive slowly via an elegant series of laps, with the spacecraft swinging by Earth, Venus and Mercury before entering an orbit in late 2025, then splitting and beginning operations in early 2026.

“We are passing once by the Earth, twice Venus and six times Mercury,” said Zender. “We are going so close to the individual planets that we can use their gravitational forces to change our direction for the next step.”

Artist’s impression of the BepiColombo spacecraft shortly after launch. Photograph: ESA/ATG medialab

The team also plan to examine features of Venus including its internal structure, its chemical composition and its interaction with solar radiation.

Once in orbit around Mercury, the instruments will set to work. An x-ray telescope, MIXS will help to shed light on the makeup of the planet.

“We are going to know in really incredible detail what the surface of Mercury is made of,” said Imber, adding that the team can probe deeper down, too. “When you form an impact crater what you find is that layers of material from under the surface are lifted by the impact and land on the surface,” she said.

Prof Nicolas Thomas, the co-project manager of the Bela instrument aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, said he wanted to investigate the planet’s curious surface features.

“A planet will shrink as it cools and Mercury has cooled a lot. We think the planet has cooled in such a way that its radius has been reduced by 8km over its history,” he said. “There are huge great cliffs that we suspect have been created by this process where this shrinking has gone on but some bits have shrunk and other bits haven’t shrunk quite so much.”

It is a phenomenon Bela will help investigate. “What we do is that we take a seriously large, very scary powerful laser and we fire it up to about 1,000km away from the planet and then we wait for six to 10 milliseconds and we look at the reflected pulse,” said Thomas. By looking at the time it has taken for the light to return, the team can calculate the contours of the surface below, essentially mapping Mercury.

Flight into the furnace of Mercury could bring us closer in hunt for alien life Read more

The BepiColombo mission is expected to last for two years once the orbiters are in position, but the team say it might continue for longer. Once over, the orbiters will be crashed into the planet’s surface.

Prof Emma Bunce of the University of Leicester, who heads the MIXS instrument team, said after watching the launch: “I didn’t know what to expect but it was absolutely amazing, just spectacular, the way it lit up the whole sky and the way the sound eventually reaches you. Quite emotional really.

“You think about the instrument you’ve worked for so many years on sitting on top of that rocket and you hope it’s going to be OK.” </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Giovanna Tinetti: "What is the 'standard model' of planets?"

A telescope to study the atmospheres of planets beyond our Solar System will be launched by the European Space Agency in the late 2020s.

The mission, to be known as Ariel, was selected by the organisation's Science Programme Committee on Tuesday.

The venture will be led scientifically from the UK by University College London astrophysicist Giovanna Tinetti.

"In the next decade we will see many, many planets being discovered - thousands, actually," she said.

"All this is amazing, but we want to go beyond that and start to understand the nature of those planets, how they formed, how they evolved, and ultimately to put our Solar System in the bigger picture," the principal investigator told BBC News.

Ariel will use a metre-sized mirror and instrumentation designed to analyse, in visible and infrared light, the chemical make-up of the gases that shroud distant worlds, or exoplanets as they are known.

This information should provide insights on how certain types of planets come to form around particular stars.

Prof Tinetti explained: "We want to sample lots of planets - some that are small like the Earth or very big like Jupiter; and at different temperatures - extremely hot, warm or temperate - around very different types of stars.

"We want to sample all the extremes and the more normal cases, because what we want to try to understand is the 'standard model' for planets, if such a model even exists."

Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey)

Image copyright ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office Image caption Artwork: The mission will cost on the order of half a billion euros

Ariel is the latest selection in Esa's Medium Class portfolio. To win the launch opportunity in 2028, the proposal had to beat competition from an X-ray telescope (Xipe) and a mission to study energetic particles around the Earth (Thor).

A detailed technical assessment will now be conducted before the Ariel project is formally "adopted" - Esa legal-speak for "final go-ahead". This sign-off, which should happen in the next two years, paves the way for manufacture of the flight hardware.

Ariel is the third exoplanet venture chosen by Esa in recent years.

Image copyright Max Alexander Image caption Prof Tinetti has already been working on the concept for the better part of 10 years

Already coming down the line is a small telescope called Cheops that should go up next year to better measure the size of these far-off worlds; and this will be followed in 2026 by Plato, a telescope that aims to find "true Earths" - planets the same size as our home world that orbit at the same distance from Sun-like stars.

And the Americans, too, have their dedicated planet-hunters, with the newest, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), launching in the next few weeks.

But at some point, the science of exoplanets has to move beyond simply finding and counting objects; their chemical compositions and physical conditions have to be determined.

The telescope that will start to make big inroads into this problem is the James Webb observatory, the successor to Hubble.

Due in orbit next year, it will study planetary atmospheres in exquisite detail with its 6.5m-diameter mirror. But the US space agency-led mission will probably only get to look at perhaps 150-200 exoplanets in its first five years of operation because of all the other demands on its time from astronomers.

Ariel, on the other hand, will have the single quest and that should see it characterising in the region of 500-1,000 planets during its primary years in orbit.

Steady platform

And one aspect that would work in Ariel's favour is the absence of any moving parts in its build, commented Plato team-member Dr Don Pollaco from Warwick University, UK.

"The issue with all of these planet experiments is that the signals you are looking for are so incredibly small that any systematics in the instrument itself will dominate the signal," he explained.

"And the systematics are often associated with bits that move. So the great thing about Ariel is that it is fixed-format - nothing changes," he told BBC News.

Ariel is likely to cost Esa about €460m (£405m) for the spacecraft chassis, the launch vehicle and operations. As is customary for science missions like this, the agency's individual member states pick up the cost of the scientific payload.

The UK will have the technical lead on the project and the instrumentation therefore will be assembled at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell in Oxfordshire.

Dr Graham Turnock, the chief executive of the UK Space Agency, said: "It is thanks to the world-leading skills of our innovative space community that a UK-led consortium has been chosen to take forward the next ESA science mission. This demonstrates what a vital role we continue to play in European collaboration on research in space.

"The Ariel mission is a prime example of the scientific innovation underpinning the wider economy. It relies on the UK's science and engineering expertise, which are at the forefront of the government's Industrial Strategy."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos </s> After 22 months spend charting the night skies, the European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed the most detailed star map of the Milky Way ever created.

The ESA's Gaia mission has catalogued the positions, distance indicators and motions of over one BILLION stars in our galaxy.

It has also recorded high-precision measurements of asteroids within the solar system.

“The observations collected by Gaia are redefining the foundations of astronomy,” says Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science.

By looking at the information collected, researchers at the ESA are learning more about how stars move during their formation and lifespan - possibly revealing clues about the formation of the galaxy itself.

“Gaia is an ambitious mission that relies on a huge human collaboration to make sense of a large volume of highly complex data," explained Hasinger.

"It demonstrates the need for long-term projects to guarantee progress in space science and technology and to implement even more daring scientific missions of the coming decades.”

According to the ESA, the mission is able to pin down the location of some of the brightest stars in the Milky Way with a level of precision that equates to Earth-bound observers picking out a euro coin on the surface of the moon.

The amount of data captured by the Gaia mission doesn't just stop at the location of stars.

As well as positions, the data include brightness information of all surveyed stars and colour measurements of nearly all, plus information on how the brightness and colour of half a million variable stars change over time.

It also contains the velocities along the line of sight of a subset of seven million stars, the surface temperatures of about a hundred million and the effect of interstellar dust on 87 million.

Gaia also observes objects in our Solar System: the second data release comprises the positions of more than 14 000 known asteroids, which allows precise determination of their orbits.

“Gaia will greatly advance our understanding of the Universe on all cosmic scales,” says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

“Even in the neighbourhood of the Sun, which is the region we thought we understood best, Gaia is revealing new and exciting features.” </s> BERLIN (AP) — The European Space Agency is dispatching an experimental probe on the final leg of its mission to land on Mars.

The Schiaparelli space lander is to separate from its mother ship at 1442 GMT (10:42 EDT) Sunday in preparation for a controlled descent to the red planet Wednesday.

The probe will take images of Mars and conduct scientific measurements on the surface, but its main purpose is to test technology for a future European Mars rover.

ESA’s last attempted Mars landing with the Beagle 2 rover failed in 2003.

Schiaparelli’s mother ship will remain in orbit to analyze gases in the Martian atmosphere to help answer whether there is or was life on Mars.

The ExoMars mission is a joint venture between ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.
The European Space Agency (ESA) approves the PLATO space observatory which will seek out Earth-like exoplanets.