Ariel (Atmospheric Remote Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large Survey) [1] [2] is the fourth Mission (M4) of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Program 2015-2025, selected in March 2018 and officially adopted in November 2020 by the Agency, whose aim is to characterize the atmospheres of hundreds of diverse exoplanets orbiting nearby different types of stars and to identify the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems. The Mission will have a nominal duration of four years and a possible extension of two years at least. Its launch is presently scheduled for mid 2029 from the French Guiana Space Centre in Kourou on board an Ariane 6.2 launcher in a dual launch configuration with Comet Interceptor. The baseline operational orbit of the Ariel is a large amplitude halo orbit around the second Lagrangian (L2) virtual point located along the line joining the Sun and the Earth-Moon system at about 1.5 million km (~236 RE) from the Earth in the anti-Sun direction. Ariel’s halo orbit is designed to be an eclipse-free orbit as it offers the possibility of long uninterrupted observations in a fairly stable environment (thermal, radiation, etc.). An injection trajectory is foreseen with a single passage through the Van Allen radiation belts (LEO, MEO and GEO near-Earth environments). This is approximated by a worst-case half orbit, prior the injection and transfer to L2, with a duration of 10.5 hours, a perigee of 300 km (LEO), an apogee of 64000 km (GEO and beyond), and an inclination close to 0 degrees. During both the injection trajectory and the final orbit around L2, Ariel will encounter and interact mainly with the Sun radiation and the space plasma environment. In L2 the Ariel spacecraft will spend most of its time in the direct solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosheath with passages through the magnetotail. These three environments, along with LEO and GEO, can lead to the build-up of a net electric charge on the spacecraft and payload conductive and dielectric surfaces leading to the risk of Electro Static Discharges (ESD), potentially endangering the whole Payload integrity and telecommunications to Ground.
ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing InfraRed Large-survey) is the fourth medium-class mission (M4) of the European Space Agency, part of the Cosmic Vision program, whose launch is planned by late 2029. ARIEL aims to study the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, their formation and evolution. The ARIEL’s target will be a sample of about 1000 planets observed with one or more of the following methods: transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy, in both visible and infrared light. The scientific payload is composed by a reflective telescope having a 1m-class elliptical primary mirror, built in solid Aluminum, and two focal-plane instruments: FGS and AIRS. FGS (Fine Guidance System)3 has the double purpose of performing photometry (0.50-0.55 µm) and low resolution spectrometry over three bands (from 0.8 to 1.95 µm) and, simultaneously, to provide data to the spacecraft AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control System). AIRS (ARIEL InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument will perform IR spectrometry in two wavelength ranges: between 1.95 and 3.9 µm (with a spectral resolution R > 100) and between 3.9 and 7.8 µm with a spectral resolution R > 30. This paper provides the status of the ICU (Instrument Control Unit), an electronic box whose purpose is to command and supply power to the AIRS warm front-end (as well as acquire science data from its two channels) and to command and control the TCU (Telescope Control Unit).
ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing InfraRed Large-survey) is a medium-class mission of the European Space Agency, part of the Cosmic Vision program, whose launch is foreseen by early 2029. ARIEL aims to study the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, their formation and evolution. The ARIEL’s target will be a sample of about 1000 planets observed with one or more of the following methods: transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy, at both visible and infrared wavelengths simultaneously. The scientific payload is composed by a reflective telescope having a 1m-class elliptical primary mirror, built in solid Aluminium, and two focal-plane instruments: FGS and AIRS. FGS (Fine Guidance System)1 has the double purpose, as suggested by its name, of performing photometry (0.50-0.55 μm) and low resolution spectrometry over three bands (from 0.8 to 1.95 µm) and, simultaneously, to provide data to the spacecraft AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control System) with a cadence of 10 Hz and contributing to reach a 0.02 arcsec pointing accuracy for bright targets. AIRS (ARIEL InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument will perform IR spectrometry in two wavelength ranges: between 1.95 and 3.9 μm (with a spectral resolution R < 100) and between 3.9 and 7.8 μm with a spectral resolution R < 30. This paper provides the status of the ICU (Instrument Control Unit), an electronic box whose purpose is to command and supply power to AIRS (as well as acquire science data from its two channels) and to command and control the TCU (Telescope Control Unit).
Ariel [1] is the M4 mission of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Program 2015-2025, whose aim is to characterize by lowresolution transit spectroscopy the atmospheres of over one thousand warm and hot exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The operational orbit of the spacecraft is baselined as a large amplitude halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point, as it offers the possibility of long uninterrupted observations in a fairly stable radiative and thermo-mechanical environment. A direct escape injection with a single passage through the Earth radiation belts and no eclipses is foreseen. The space environment around Earth and L2 presents significant design challenges to all spacecraft, including the effects of interactions with Sun radiation and charged particles owning to the surrounding plasma environment, potentially leading to dielectrics charging and unwanted electrostatic discharge (ESD) phenomena endangering the Payload operations and its data integrity. Here, we present some preliminary simulations and analyses about the Ariel Payload dielectrics and semiconductors charging along the transfer orbit from launch to L2 included.
A high-energy photon polarimeter for astrophysics studies in the energy range from 10 to 800 MeV is considered. The proposed concept uses a stack of silicon microstrip detectors, where they play the roles of both a converter and a tracker. The purpose of this paper is to outline the parameters of such a polarimeter and to estimate the productivity of measurements. Our study, supported by a Monte Carlo simulation, shows that with a 1-year observation period the polarimeter will provide 6% accuracy of the polarization degree for photon energies above 100 MeV, which would be a significant advance relative to the currently explored energy range of a few MeV. The proposed polarimeter design could easily be adjusted to the specific photon energy range to maximize efficiency if needed.
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