The three proposals chosen to proceed are Euclid, PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO), and Solar Orbiter.
Europe is to lead the most ambitious space mission ever undertaken to study the behaviour of the Sun.Known as Solar Orbiter, the probe will have to operate a mere 42 million km from our star - closer than any spacecraft to date.The mission proposal was formally adopted by European Space Agency (Esa) member states on Tuesday.Solar Orbiter is expected to launch in 2017 and will cost close to a billion euros. Nasa (the US space agency) will participate, providing two instruments for the probe and the rocket to send it on its way.The Esa delegates, who were meeting in Paris, also selected a mission to investigate two of the great mysteries of modern cosmology - dark matter and dark energy. The Euclid telescope will map the distribution of galaxies to try to get some fresh insight on these dark puzzles. Like Solar Orbiter, Euclid's cost will be close to a billion euros. However, the mission still needs to clear some legal hurdles and formal adoption is not expected until next year. A launch could occur in 2019.
Interesting the launch date for M3 mentioned in the newsletter is 2024, two years later than previously mentioned. Could be just the requirement for Plato but surprising it would take so long considering all the work on the mission that's already been done.
NASA should contribute $20 million worth of hardware to Europe’s planned Euclid dark-matter observatory, but only “in the context of a strong U.S. commitment” to the proposed Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a panel of astrophysicists said.The National Research Council’s Committee on the Assessment of a Plan for U.S. Participation in Euclid was asked by NASA in November to determine whether that mission would help fulfill any of WFIRST’s science objectives. The European Space Agency (ESA) wants NASA to provide near-infrared detectors for Euclid in exchange for a spot on the 12-member Euclid science team and early access to the mission’s science data.ESA has said that if the United States wants to participate, a formal memorandum of understanding must be signed by mid-May.
The selection of the M3 mission is planned to take place in February 2014, with one single mission selected for implementation. Mission adoption is planned to take place in 2015.The PLATO mission joins ECHO, LOFT, Marco-Polo-R and STE-QUEST as the five candidate missions for the M3 launch opportunity.
The mission concepts are nearing the completion of their Assessment Phase study activities, and the Advisory Structure to the ESA Science Programme will be asked, in January 2014, to recommend which of the five should be carried forward for Definition Phase activities. The Science Programme Committee will then decide on the matter in February of 2014.In view of this selection, the five M3-mission concepts EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R, PLATO, and STE-QUEST will be presented to the scientific community on 21 January 2014, at the Institut Océanographique de Paris.
Result of Cosmic Vision M-class mission down-selectionESA selected in February 2011 five candidates for a medium-class mission – M3 – for a launch opportunity in 2024 (EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R, PLATO and STE-QUEST). The Science Programme Committee members will make their final decision on the M3 mission during their February meeting. Location: Press release on www.esa.intExpected date: 19–20 February
Immediately after the presentation meeting on 21 January, ESA's Space Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) met to evaluate the candidate missions and to make a recommendation to the Science Programme Executive about which concept should be carried forward for Definition Phase activities.
In February 2011 EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R and STE-Quest were selected for assessment phase studies, though STE-Quest was removed from the competition in January 2014 due to technical readiness issues.
Interesting that there are two exoplanet focused missions represented in the candidate list
Plato planet-hunter in pole positionA telescope to find thousands of planets beyond our Solar System is the hot favourite for selection as Europe's next medium-class science mission.
The final slides that were presented are here: http://t.co/fZ50cniXfsOn my tablet, so please feel free to download and attach properly as I don't seem able to on this device:-/--- TonyEDIT: looks like the file is no longer available. However, I have it on my tablet. Is there somewhere on L2 where it can be uploaded to?EDIT 2: finally managed to transfer the file to a PC and upload
TWINKLE: A BRITISH MISSION TO EXPLORE EXOPLANETSTwinkle, a bold and pioneering British mission, will observe more than one hundred known exoplanets and will unveil their weather, history and the chemical composition of their atmosphere.
EnVision is a planetary orbiter mission competing for the European Space Agency's 2025 launch opportunity. It will accomplish revolutionary surface, interior and atmospheric science to determine the nature and rate of change caused by geological and atmospheric processes. The incredible data harvest will allow us to understand why Venus has evolved so differently from Earth despite their apparent sister-planet characteristics.
Main Belt Comets (MBCs), a type of Active Asteroid, constitute a newly identified class of solar system objects. They have stable, asteroid-like orbits and some exhibit a recurrent comet-like appearance. It is believed that they survived the age of the solar system in a dormant state and that their current ice sublimation driven activity only began recently. Buried water ice is the only volatile expected to survive under an insulating surface. Excavation by an impact can expose the ice and trigger the start of MBC activity. We present the case for a mission to one of these objects, to be submitted to the European Space Agency’s current call for an M-class mission.
FARSIDE is a mission to the farside of the moon that consists of a lander and an instrumented relay satellite. The lander will make pioneering radio astronomy, geophysical, and geochemical measurements from the interior of the 2000-km diameter South Pole-Aitken basin. From a relay satellite at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, the surface will be monitored for impact-generated light flashes, and synergistic radio and magnetic measurements will be obtained.
In the frame of the M4 Cosmic Vision ESA call, low frequency and high frequency radar is also proposed for the Castalia mission to a Main Belt Comet, for Marco Polo 2D to a D-type asteroid and for PhobEx to Phobos.
The Hera Saturn entry probe mission is proposed as an M-class mission led by ESA with a significant contribution from NASA. It consists of one atmospheric probe to be sent into the atmosphere of Saturn, and a Carrier-Relay spacecraft. Hera will perform in situ measurements of the chemical and isotopic compositions as well as the dynamics of Saturn’s atmosphere using a single probe, with the goal of improving our understanding of the origin, formation, and evolution of Saturn, the giant planets and their satellite systems, with extrapolation to extrasolar planets. Hera will probe well into the cloud-forming region of the troposphere, below the region accessible to remote sensing, to the locations where certain cosmogenically abundant species are expected to be well mixed.
COrE+ is an ambitious CMB mission with a science program that will complement the achievements of the Planck satellite. A primary objective of the mission will be to investigate the physics of inflation and to constrain the inflation potential through precise measurements of the CMB polarization B-modes.
During the formation and the entire life of stars and planets, several physical processes, in particular magnetic fields and winds, influence their dynamics, and thus impact their evolution. These processes directly impact the internal structure of stars, the transport of angular momentum, and of course the direct circumstellar environment. They thus drive not only stellar evolution, but also the formation and fate of planets surrounding the stars and the emergence of life. We propose to follow the life cycle of matter, from the interstellar medium to the surface of stars and the edge of the stellar systems, and thus to study the formation, structure, evolution, and 3D dynamic environment of all types of stars and their planets. This will be done through the use of a high-resolution spectropolarimeter working in both the UV and visible wavelength domains attached to a 1.3 meter telescope.
The Theia mission will explore the Universe at unprecedented astrometric precision of 0.3µas over a field of about 1 degree. Theia is the divinity of sight and daughter of Gaia. Similarly, the instrument concept carries on the heritage of HIPPARCOS and Gaia missions combined to latest developments in precision metrology control. While giant telescopes and other observatories will do wonders in spectroscopy, imaging, photometry, etc. Theia will enable science cases unique to µas astrometry, a precision that will reveal the Universe in motion like Earth-like planets orbiting around our immediate stellar neighbors, the activity of the most extreme objects known (black holes and neutron stars) and unveil the local sub-structure of the dark matter halo in which the Milky Way resides. Conceived as an open observatory class mission, Theia will bring ultra-precise astrometry to the broader community, including target-of-opportunity science in the era of Extremely Large Telescopes.
^^^Indeed I cannot find much information on either Marco Polo 2D or PhobEx and do not know whether they submitted.However here is an interesting interview with the lead for Marco Polo 2D, a sample return from a D-type asteroid in collaboration with the chinese;https://www.beaconreader.com/katharine-sanderson/grabbing-a-fistful-of-asteroid
The MarcoPolo venture, which has been under discussion for a decade, has fallen out of the European Space Agency's latest competition to find a future medium-class mission.
http://www.nature.com/news/budget-restrictions-bite-for-europe-s-space-mission-hopefuls-1.17226Full list of the survivors from the technical down-select.Science down-select interviews are late April with the final shortlist appearing by June.
Indeed, not a lot of blockbuster science left in. Should also be a bit of a wake-up call that it can't seem to do any interplanetary mission for €650 million. Seriously?
Quote from: Alpha_Centauri on 04/03/2015 09:03 amIndeed, not a lot of blockbuster science left in. Should also be a bit of a wake-up call that it can't seem to do any interplanetary mission for €650 million. Seriously?This M call was lowered to €450M, that's the mail reason planetary was left out. May be the lesson is that you can't lower the budgets without sacrificing the most break through science.
Yes I know it was lowered, but €450m is just the cost to ESA. Member states supply instruments meaning total cost will be higher.My point is compare this to NASA's Discovery program for example. Why is ESA's investment,even at this lowered rate, not enough to produce a feasible interplanetary mission?
BTW, does anyone know if the ESA cost cap include the launch services?
My point is compare this to NASA's Discovery program for example. Why is ESA's investment,even at this lowered rate, not enough to produce a feasible interplanetary mission?
NASA's Discovery program (or rather, generally their mission accounting) hides the cost for these, while their instrument load is often - by comparison - on the low side.
Interplanetary missions usually need larger launchers. Larger launchers cost more money. NASA's Discovery program (or rather, generally their mission accounting) hides the cost for these, while their instrument load is often - by comparison - on the low side.If I have a mission that requires a 200-million launcher (Ariane) to put a handful of relatively cheap instruments towards another planet, I'm effectively cutting my budget by at least one third by using ESA-style accounting in comparison to NASA-style accounting. If I have a plan that uses a 40-million launcher (Vega) to place some high-priced instruments into Earth orbit for LEO for an astronomy mission i'm running better with ESA than NASA.
There's even one proposed mission that abuses the two accounting methods as good as they give. The AIDA successor AIM/DART. Essentially splitting the mission into a US-paid section with a fast kinetic interceptor (next to no instruments but pricy launcher) that NASA can put as low a price tag as possible on and a European-paid section with a slow orbiter on a standard bus (packed with instruments, but cheap launch) that ESA can put a low price tag as possible on. If the two were switched the nominal mission cost would probably roughly double.
ESA divides its robotic science missions into small, medium and large segments. Favata said the agency should pick finalists for its next medium-class science project — the M4 mission — in June after analyzing proposals submitted by research teams across Europe.Once ESA managers decide which proposal will go forward — and how much it will cost — officials can plan when to start the next medium-class mission competition. If ESA concludes it is interested in partnering with NASA on the Europa mission, scientists could present concepts in the selection round for Europe’s M5 mission, according to Favata.
Surprising that LOFT didn't get through, but maybe they thought that two X-ray missions in the final shortlist would've been too many, so they made a choise between XIPE and LOFT. As a personal opinion, I'd like to see something other that exoplanet missions for a change.
You talk as if we were inundated with active exoplanet missions. With Kepler not in the best of shape it's not like we have a glut of them up there the follow ons are still either being built or just exist on paper which is a worst position than X-Ray telescopes in space.
Quote from: Star One on 06/06/2015 10:08 pmYou talk as if we were inundated with active exoplanet missions. With Kepler not in the best of shape it's not like we have a glut of them up there the follow ons are still either being built or just exist on paper which is a worst position than X-Ray telescopes in space.PLATO was selected for M3, so ARIEL would make two M missions in a row for exoplanets. ESA will also fly CHEOPS between now and then, and NASA will fly TESS.edit:This wouldn't be a bad thing, they are all complimentary, but it's hard to argue exoplanets are being under-served.
This wouldn't be a bad thing, they are all complimentary, but it's hard to argue exoplanets are being under-served.
A big factor in the selection of missions is the strategic element. Europe has a decent sized and successful exoplanet community, but it consistently lost out in previous selection rounds and was especially hard hit by the cancellation of Eddington, and the shelving of Darwin exacerbated woes. Things were looking bleak for the exoplanet community in Europe, and to top it all it lost out in the L-class meaning no big mission for decades.The recent S and M calls were really the last roll of the dice for ESA to maintain this key field. It's not hard to see that there is a lot of pressure to select them now. It only feels like a lot is coming along now because ESA failed to support it earlier and let NASA push ahead.
Sorry, I didn't mean to start a war with my comment... I know that exoplanet community was hard-hit by Eddington and Darwin cancellations, as well as that of SIM(Lite) and TPF in the US. But it's hardly the only subfield of astrophysics that has had these problems. On the X-ray side, GEMS was cancelled, LOFT has been trying the get approved for years, and while Xeus/IXO/Athena won L2 slot, it won't launch until late next decade. The last ESA high-energy astrophysics missions that I can think of are XMM-Newton (launched 1999) and Integral (2002). Between Integral and M4 ESA will have launched Corot (2006, with CNES), Gaia (2013), Cheops (2017), Euclid (2020), and Plato (2023) - three missions targeted for exoplanet research and two (Gaia and Euclid) that detect exoplanets, although it's not their main goal. So I would argue that X-ray astrophysics is more under-served.And no, I don't work in high-energy astrophysics.
The current planning foresees the release of the M5 Call around the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016. The Call is foreseen to solicit proposals for a mission with a cap to the ESA Cost at Completion of 550 M€. However, proposals with a cost below the above cap would be considered with no prejudice, both for stand-alone missions as for contributions to partner-led missions. Proposals whose cost to ESA would exceed the cap would be considered as non-feasible.
In preparation for the M5 Call the Executive would like to solicit the interest of the broad scientific community, encouraging the exploration of ideas covering all possible domains of science that can make use of a space platform, including disciplines that thus far have not considered this possibility. Such proposals would be welcome and considered with interest.
Medium-size missions are a key vehicle for international cooperation in the Science Programme of ESA. As such, proposals in response to the M5 Call in cooperation with other partners will be welcome.
To add to Alpha_Centauri's posts: the only public info about Xipe that I could find is this presentation from 2012.http://webusers.fis.uniroma3.it/~agn10/file/muleri.pdfI have no idea if the current mission proposal is different from the one described in the presentation.I also found the Senior Science Committee recommendation letter on the webpage of one of the (unsuccessful) candidates:http://eotvos.dm.unipi.it/ESAM4mission2015/SSCM4Recommendation.pdfThere's not really any new info, just some nice words about the three missions, but maybe you can try to read between the lines to find which one is the favourite.
Three mission assessment studies, of interest in the context of future calls for medium-size missions, are now available. The studies, into a cooled infrared telescope, a Jovian moon flyby mission, and an impactor on Europa, were carried out at ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) at the request of ESA's Future Missions Office.
The scientific community is welcome to use these studies in preparation of possible proposals for future M mission opportunities.
COSMIC VISION M4 CANDIDATE MISSIONS: PRESENTATION EVENTARIEL, THOR, and XIPE, the three candidates for the M4 medium-class mission in ESA's Science Programme, will be presented to the science community at a special event in Paris on 3 July 2017......The mission concepts have completed their Assessment Phase study activities, and a recommendation about which concept should be carried forward for Definition Phase activities will be issued under the responsibility of the Advisory Structure to the ESA Science Programme. The present plan is to submit to the Science Programme Committee the proposal to select one mission in November 2017.
Planet-hunter adoptedIn the same meeting Plato – Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars – has now been adopted in the Science Programme, following its selection in February 2014.This means it can move from a blueprint into construction. In the coming months industry will be asked to make bids to supply the spacecraft platform.Following its launch in 2026, Plato will monitor thousands of bright stars over a large area of the sky, searching for tiny, regular dips in brightness as their planets cross in front of them, temporarily blocking out a small fraction of the starlight.The mission will have a particular emphasis on discovering and characterising Earth-sized planets and super-Earths orbiting Sun-like stars in the habitable zone – the distance from the star where liquid surface water could exist.It will also investigate seismic activity in some of the host stars, and determine their masses, sizes and ages, helping to understand the entire exoplanet system.Plato will operate from the ‘L2’ virtual point in space 1.5 million km beyond Earth as seen from the Sun.
ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission, was selected by ESA today as part of its Cosmic Vision plan.
ARIEL's metre-class telescope will operate at visible and infrared wavelengths. It will be launched on ESA's new Ariane 6 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou in mid 2028. It will operate from an orbit around the second Lagrange point, L2, 1.5 million kilometres directly 'behind' Earth as viewed from the Sun, on an initial four-year mission.
ARIEL was chosen from three candidates, competing against the space plasma physics mission THOR (Turbulence Heating ObserveR) and the high-energy astrophysics mission XIPE (X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer).
A mission to investigate the atmospheres of planets around other stars has been selected by the European Space Agency for launch in the late 2020s, officials announced this week.The space telescope will observe 1,000 exoplanets, using a spectrometer to measure the chemical make-up of their atmospheres. Astronomers want to learn about the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres to study how the distant worlds formed, knowledge that could put our solar system in context in the cosmos.
“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,” said Graham Turnock, chief executive of the UK Space Agency.“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.”
A high-energy survey of the early Universe, an infrared observatory to study the formation of stars, planets and galaxies, and a Venus orbiter are to be considered for ESA’s fifth medium class mission in its Cosmic Vision science programme, with a planned launch date in 2032.The three candidates, the Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor (Theseus), the SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (Spica), and the EnVision mission to Venus were selected from 25 proposals put forward by the scientific community.Theseus, Spica and EnVision will be studied in parallel and a final decision is expected in 2021.
Theseus is a novel mission to monitor transient events in the high-energy Universe across the whole sky and over the entirety of cosmic history. In particular, it promises to make a complete census of gamma-ray bursts from the Universe’s first billion years, to help shed light on the life cycle of the first stars.
Spica, a joint European-Japanese project that offers significant improvement in far-infrared spectroscopic and survey capabilities over NASA’s Spitzer and ESA’s Herschel space observatories, would ensure continuing advances can be made in this field.
EnVision follows on from ESA’s highly successful Venus Express that focused primarily on atmospheric research. Planned to be implemented with NASA participation, next-generation EnVision would determine the nature and current state of geological activity on Venus and its relationship with the atmosphere, to better understand the different evolutionary pathways of the two planets.It would map the surface and obtain detailed radar images, improving on those obtained by NASA’s Magellan in the 1990s to provide greater insight into the geological evolution of the surface.
EnVISION looks like a shoe-in with the latest Venus discoveries.
EnVision will be ESA's next Venus orbiter, providing a holistic view of the planet from its inner core to upper atmosphere to determine how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently.The mission was selected by ESA's Science Programme Committee on 10 June as the fifth medium-class mission in the Agency's Cosmic Vision plan, targeting a launch in the early 2030s.
The next step for EnVision is to move to the detailed 'Definition Phase', in which the design of the satellite and instruments is finalised. Following the design phase, a European industrial contractor will be selected to build and test EnVision before it is launched on an Ariane 6 rocket. The earliest launch opportunity for EnVision is 2031, with other possible options in 2032 and 2033. The spacecraft would take around 15 months to reach the planet, with a further 16 months to achieve orbit circularisation through aerobraking. Its 92-minute orbit will be quasi-polar with an altitude of between 220 km and 540 km.
SPICA NO LONGER CANDIDATE FOR ESA'S M5 MISSION SELECTION15 October 2020The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS/JAXA) have announced their decision to no longer consider the infrared space observatory, SPICA, as a candidate for the upcoming selection as ESA's 5th medium-class mission in its Cosmic Vision Programme (M5).https://sci.esa.int/s/AplJM2A
SPICA (SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics) is a far IR telescope to study and answer fundamental astrophysical questions ranging from the formation and evolution of galaxies to the physics of star formation in dusty environments, including the role of magnetic fields, and the origin of planetary systems.The SPICA mission was conceived as a cooperation between ESA and JAXA and it was initially selected as a candidate for the Cosmic Vision M5 mission together with THESEUS and EnVision. In the course of Phase A, it appeared that, although technical feasibility could be demonstrated, SPICA cost at completion was exceeding the boundaries of an M-class mission. Therefore, ESA, JAXA and SRON jointly decided to withdraw the mission from the M5 selection.However, the Phase A was completed. The technical outcome is documented in the following report which may be used as guidance and reference for future studies.
What were the missions competing for M6? I'm not finding a previous mention of M6 in this thread.
The space science community has narrowed down the shortlist for ESA’s next ‘medium’ mission to three finalists: M-Matisse, Plasma Observatory and Theseus. Following further study, one will be selected for implementation as the newest addition to ESA’s space science mission fleet.
It is expected that one candidate mission will be chosen by mid-2026.
M-Matisse would study Mars using two spacecraft, each carrying an identical set of instruments to observe Mars simultaneously from two different locations in space. In particular, M-Matisse would shed light on how the solar wind influences Mars’s atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere. The mission aims to investigate the impact of these interactions on Mars's lower atmosphere and surface, which is a key aspect to understand the Red Planet’s habitability, as well as the evolution of its atmosphere and climate.Plasma Observatory is a seven-spacecraft mission to study the environment of electrically charged particles (called a plasma) around Earth. It would focus on two questions: how are particles energised in space plasmas? What processes dominate energy transport and drive interactions between the different regions of Earth’s magnetospheric system? Plasma Observatory would complement ESA’s current and planned missions looking at the Sun-Earth interaction to support our understanding of how the solar wind affects our planet, ultimately helping us keep life and technology safe from its effects.Theseus is a multi-instrument mission focusing on high-energy, short-lived events in the cosmos. In particular, Theseus would look at gamma-ray bursts near and far. Nearby, shorter-lived, gamma-ray bursts are likely counterparts to gravitational waves released by merging neutron stars. Distant, longer-lived gamma-ray bursts would help us understand more about the emergence of the first galaxies in the Universe. Overall, Theseus would cover a broad spectrum of science, from stellar astrophysics and the effects of stellar activity on exoplanets, to the physics of matter accretion and particle acceleration processes.