ESA’s first small Science Programme mission is ready for construction. The implementation phase has started, meaning that the spacecraft has gone from selection to implementation in less than 18 months.
CHEOPS was selected by ESA in October 2012 from 26 proposals that were submitted in response to the announcement of the small mission programme. It was officially adopted into the Science Programme in February this year. Capped to an ESA cost of €50 million, it is being developed in collaboration with the Swiss Space Office (SSO), a division of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and the University of Bern, Switzerland. The Swiss organisations lead the consortium of 11 ESA Member States contributing to the mission and represented in the CHEOPS Science Team. The spacecraft will be built by Airbus Defence and Space, Spain.
CHEOPS will most likely be launched as a passenger on a Soyuz or Vega launcher from Kourou at the end of 2017.
ESA and its mission partners are inviting children to submit drawings that will be miniaturised and engraved on two plaques that will be put on the satellite.
CHEOPS is now moving steadily from a paper design to the hardware phase. Over the last couple of months the Instrument Consortium, led by the University of Bern, has taken delivery of the first hardware from Airbus Defence and Space (ADS)–Spain, the prime contractor for the CHEOPS platform. These deliveries included the Platform Simulator, as well as the platform panels for instrument assembly and handling, the Star Tracker Optical Head Assemblies with their associated multi-layer insulation (MLI), and the support structure for the Baffle Cover Assembly.
So CHEOPS will fly on a Soyuz from CSG.
Calling all graphic designers & artists! Submit design to feature on the rocket carrying #CHEOPS satellite 🚀 https://t.co/VZugX77wTV https://t.co/UUcFtmCHBb
Peter B. de Selding @pbdesExoplanet hunter CHEOPS sat, built by @AirbusSpace for @esa, to launch late 2018/early 2019 on @ArianeGroup @Arianespace Soyuz from Europe's spaceport. To launch w/ Italy's 1st 2d-gen Cosmo-SkyMed radar sat. CHEOPS is 300kg, orbit 700km, inclination 98deg.
Nr Version Flug Startdatum Nutzlast(en) 23 Sojus STB VS23 15.10.2019 (tbc) CSG 1 · CHEOPS · ANGELS · EyeSat · OPS-SAT · 4 CubeSats Angaben ohne Gewähr, Änderungen jederzeit möglich. Aktualisiert: 4. April 2019
The Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, has successfully passed the final analysis review for its launch on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.All technical evaluations performed by Arianespace on the mission’s key aspects, including the launch trajectory and payload separation, have shown positive results.
Arianespace’s launch manifest for the coming months is currently under discussion, with the exact date for Cheops shipment to the Spaceport, and its launch date, to be confirmed at a later stage. The mission is foreseen to launch in the last quarter of 2019.
ESA’s Cheops mission lifted off on a Soyuz-Fregat launcher from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 09:54:20 CET on 18 December on its exciting mission to characterise planets orbiting stars other than the Sun.Signals from the spacecraft, received at the mission control centre based at INTA in Torrejón de Ardoz near Madrid, Spain, via the Troll ground tracking station at 12:43 CET confirmed that the launch was successful.
Early orbit phase (LEOP) and In-Orbit Commissioning (IOC) will be performed by the spacecraft contractor Airbus before responsibility for CHEOPS operations will be taken over by the CHEOPS Mission Consortium.In early January, the CHEOPS crew will start the commissioning of the instrument, which will take 2 months. At the beginning they will take dark images for about 2 weeks to test the electronics. At the end of January the next crucial action will follow: the opening of the lid. Only when they see the first star they know whether the focus setting is correct. Ideally, the star would appear as a blurred object, because the instrument is slightly out of focus, since CHEOPS only wants to observe bright stars and exposure time would otherwise be too short. At the beginning of March the first scientific measurements are expected.Planning of the observations will be carried out at the Science Operations Centre (SOC) located at the University of Geneva and communicated to the Mission Operations Centre (MOC), where spacecraft commanding sequences will be uplinked via ground station antennas at Torrejón (nominal) and Villafranca (backup) near Madrid. The spacecraft telemetry will be routed from the MOC to the SOC for calibration, processing and archiving.
Update from #Cheops in-orbit commissioning: the #science instrument was activated on Wed 8 January & took its first 'dark image' yesterday. Everything is operating as planned 👍 The telescope cover is still closed & will be opened by end January.
The cover of the CHEOPS space telescope was scheduled to be opened on Monday, January 27, 2020. The date is being pushed back by a few days because several tests are being repeated.The CHEOPS space telescope has been orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 700 kilometers since its launch on December 18, 2019. The in-orbit commissioning of the various components since early January has been proceeding very well. A wide variety of tests have been performed in order to ensure that the instruments and the satellite platform are working properly. CHEOPS has also taken its first images with closed cover and transmitted them to Earth. Although these are completely dark, they are essential for a proper calibration of the instrument.While everything is functioning as intended, the analysis of all the data has convinced the CHEOPS team that several instrumental parameters could be further optimized. This has led the team to repeat several tests, resulting in a delay in the original planning.As a result, the opening of the space telescope cover, originally foreseen for Monday, January 27, 2020, is being delayed by a few days. This decision was taken because the opening is an irreversible action and all activities and tests which are still to be performed with closed cover need to be completed and properly interpreted.The delay in the opening of the telescope cover will neither impact the overall schedule for CHEOPS nor the start of scientific operation.
Six weeks after the launch of Cheops, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission’s in-orbit commissioning.
The cover was opened as intended on Wednesday, January 29, 2020 at 7:38 am. CHEOPS is now being tested for precision and the first images are being produced.
First images to be published in one to two weeks
ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has revealed a unique planetary system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythmic dance as they orbit their central star. The sizes and masses of the planets, however, don’t follow such an orderly pattern. This finding challenges current theories of planet formation.The discovery of increasing numbers of planetary systems, none like our own Solar System, continues to improve our understanding of how planets form and evolve. A striking example is the planetary system called TOI-178, some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor.Astronomers already expected this star to host two or more exoplanets after observing it with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). New, highly precise observations with Cheops, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite that was launched in 2019, now show that TOI-178 harbours at least six planets and that this foreign solar system has a very unique layout. The team, led by Adrien Leleu of University of Geneva and the University of Bern in Switzerland, published their results today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Quote from: jacqmans on 01/26/2021 07:59 amESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has revealed a unique planetary system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythmic dance as they orbit their central star. The sizes and masses of the planets, however, don’t follow such an orderly pattern. This finding challenges current theories of planet formation.The discovery of increasing numbers of planetary systems, none like our own Solar System, continues to improve our understanding of how planets form and evolve. A striking example is the planetary system called TOI-178, some 200 light-years away in the constellation of Sculptor.Astronomers already expected this star to host two or more exoplanets after observing it with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). New, highly precise observations with Cheops, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite that was launched in 2019, now show that TOI-178 harbours at least six planets and that this foreign solar system has a very unique layout. The team, led by Adrien Leleu of University of Geneva and the University of Bern in Switzerland, published their results today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.Article: https://www.aanda.org/component/article?access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/202039767
Unique exoplanet photobombs Cheops study of nearby star systemhttps://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheops/Unique_exoplanet_photobombs_Cheops_study_of_nearby_star_system
After a thousand days in orbit, the CHEOPS space telescope shows almost no signs of wear. Under these conditions, it could continue to reveal details of some of the most fascinating exoplanets for quite some time. CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the aegis of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva.
During a break from looking at planets around other stars, ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?
ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops confirmed the existence of four warm exoplanets orbiting four stars in our Milky Way. These exoplanets have sizes between Earth and Neptune and orbit their stars closer than Mercury our Sun.These so-called mini-Neptunes are unlike any planet in our Solar System and provide a ‘missing link’ between Earth-like and Neptune-like planets that is not yet understood. Mini-Neptunes are among the most common types of exoplanets known, and astronomers are starting to find more and more orbiting bright stars.