The CHEOPS satellite will be able to image planets around distant stars.
Humans are nothing if not explorers. The footsteps of brave men and women are found on inaccessible mountain peaks, in the middle of inhospitable deserts, and even on the surface of the moon. Even more ambitiously, years of science fiction movies have teased that one day we will even venture among the stars and perhaps populate the galaxy.
Of course, before we do that, we’ll have to know where to go. In recent years, astronomers have found thousands of planets orbiting other stars, but we haven’t been able to directly image most of these planets to find ones that are fully suitable to be a second home for humanity. However, we’re in luck. The European Space Agency (ESA) is about to launch a satellite that will study specific, known, exoplanets (i.e. planets around other suns), including their sizes and even some of their atmospheres.
Artist's conception of the CHEOPS launch. What is depicted is the moment that the fairings are ... [+]
This satellite is called CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite). It is scheduled to launch on a Soyuz rocket on December 17, from a launch pad at Europe’s Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
CHEOPS will use a single 30 centimeter diameter mirror to study planets that have already been identified by earlier telescopes. Thus, it is not a discovery mission, rather one that will study known planets to better understand planetary evolution. The approach that CHEOPS will use to study the targeted planets is called the transit method.
The transit method relies on when a planet crosses in front of its parent star. In doing so, it makes a tiny shadow, which dims the light of the star. CHEOPS will look for that dip and use it to determine such things as the planet’s diameter. Combined with other information, CHEOPS will be able to characterize the planet as being rocky like the Earth, or gaseous like Neptune.
CHEOPS will image planets in the mass range of one to twenty times that of the Earth. This range is ... [+]
Eighty percent of the observing time will be reserved for the satellite’s scientific team, while twenty percent will be made available for guest scientists to propose a specific set of observations. The goals of the CHEOPS team comprise a rich scientific program. They will improve the size measurements of known exoplanets, which will allow for an estimate of each planet’s density. They will try to observe the transit of exoplanets that are thus far only known from the observation of the wobble of their parent star due to the effect of the planet’s gravity.
CHEOPS scientists will also look for additional planets missed by earlier observations and they will even try to find such interesting features as rings around known exoplanets or even moons. And, of course, CHEOPS will attempt to observe and characterize the atmosphere around those planets that are found hosting one. It will do this by looking at light reflected from the planet just before it passes behind its parent star.
Astronomers will use the information from CHEOPS to better understand makeup of exoplanets, like whether they are rocky, gaseous, something in between, or even something unexpected. In addition, astronomers are interested in planetary evolution, addressing such questions as how the locations of planets change within their solar system over the course of eons.
CHEOPS should start operations in April of 2020 and it is anticipated that over the course of 42 months that it will study in detail between 300 and 500 worlds. CHEOPS is a relatively small telescope, but it will provide valuable information for planned future missions by NASA (James Webb Space Telescope [JWST], scheduled for the 2020s) and ESA (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey [ARIEL], scheduled for 2028). These later satellites will use infrared light to look directly at the atmospheres of exoplanets, trying to tease out the signature of water and methane, two substances that could be the signatures of life, or at least habitability.
It will be decades before humanity can credibly talk about venturing to the stars. However, when we do, it will be research into fundamental science using instruments like CHEOPS that we will have to thank.
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