The European Space Agency (ESA) have formally adopted Ariel, the first mission dedicated to study the nature, formation and evolution of exoplanets.
- Ariel has passed major feasibility reviews and has been formally adopted into the program of future missions for implementation:
- It will survey about 1000 planets outside our solar system during its lifetime;
- Ariel will unveil the nature, formation and evolution of a large and assorted sample of planets around different types of stars in our galaxy.
More than 50 institutes from 17 countries have been working over the past 5 years to develop the science goals and design the instrumentation which will enable Ariel to survey a diverse sample of around 1000 planets outside our own solar system.
Congratulations to the teams for their work which contributed fully to the adoption of the ARIEL mission!