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The Ariel mission will address the fundamental questions on what exoplanets are made of and how planetary systems form and evolve by investigating the atmospheres of many hundreds of diverse planets orbiting different types of stars. This large and unbiased survey will contribute to answering the first of the four ambitious topics listed in the ESA’s Cosmic Vision: “What are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life?”.
Ariel will be placed in orbit at Lagrange Point 2 (L2) , a gravitational balance point beyond the Earth’s orbit, where the spacecraft is shielded from the Sun and has a clear view of the whole night sky. This will maximise its options for observing exoplanets discovered previously by other missions.
Ariel will observe around a thousand transiting planets, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a range of host star types. This comprehensive approach will underpin statistical understanding generating robust conclusions which are simply not possible with smaller samples or patchy coverage of the relevant parameter space. Ariel will use transit spectroscopy in the 1.1-7.8 μm spectral range and photometry in multiple narrow bands covering the optical and near-infrared (NIR).
The Ariel Ground Segment (GS) will provide the means and resources with which to manage and control the mission via telecommands, to receive and process the telemetry from the satellite, and to produce, disseminate and archive the generated products.
One of the main contribution will be in in the Ariel Data Reduction Pipeline,it will be produced and maintained by the Instrument Operations and Science Data Centre (IOSDC) and delivered to ESA Science Operations Centre (SOC). Ariel Pipeline will then be run automatically at SOC, starting with the Level 0 Data Products and producing Data Products up to Level 2, which are subsequently ingested into the Ariel science archive.
Level 2 Data Products will then be provided back to the Ariel Mission Consortium for the production and delivery of the Level 3 Data Products to SOC, and ingestion into the Ariel Science Archive.
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