ESA - S class mission - 2017 - candidates

[bolun]

Call for a Small mission opportunity in ESA's Science Programme for a launch in 2017

09 Mar 2012

Through the present Call the Director of Science and Robotic Exploration solicits from the broad scientific community in ESA's Member States proposals for the competitive selection of mission concepts to be candidate for the implementation of one small-size (S-class) mission for launch in 2017.

The schedule for the issue of the Call and the proposal evaluation process is:

- LOI submission deadline March 23, 2012 (12:00 CET)
- Briefing meeting March 28, 2012 (TBC)
- Proposal submission deadline June 15, 2012 (12:00 CET)
- Proposal evaluation July - October 2012

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=50119

[bolun]

Esa to start mini space mission series

The European Space Agency is starting what it expects to become a regular series of small science missions.

The first winning "S-Class" idea will receive 50 million euros (£42m) and will be readied for launch in 2017.

It is a departure for the organisation that is used to spending hundreds of millions of euros on flagship planetary probes and space telescopes.

Esa hopes particularly to encourage young scientists and research teams from smaller member states.

"We see a dearth of people being trained in space science in satellites, and this can pick those people up and help bring them on so that by the time they get to work on some of our big missions they already have experience," said Prof Mark McCaughrean, head of Esa's Research and Scientific Support Department.

"Also, it gives our smaller member states the opportunity to lead missions, which is something that is very difficult for them to do. The 'big four' (France, Germany, Italy, UK) have no problem, but it is harder for the likes of Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

"We want to hear from innovative people who've got a clever idea that doesn't need a billion or half a billion euros, but can be done with a much smaller amount."

Interested parties will have to move fast, however. Expressions of interest must be submitted by 23 March, followed by a defined proposal in June.

A clutch of the best ideas will probably be selected for study in November, with a winner chosen for implementation 12 months after that.

There is no directive on what an S-Class mission should do, other than it fit within Esa's "Cosmic Vision" - the strategy document that governs all the agency's space science endeavours and which covers fundamental, but fairly broad, themes about the Universe and our place within it.

Although Esa will be contributing 50m euros, the national governments of winning scientists will almost certainly be backing the projects as well, perhaps funding the cost of instrument development.

Even so, the "fast and small" nature of the S-Class philosophy means it is unlikely that we will see highly sophisticated and complex projects such as deep-space probes or Mars landers.

More realistic mission concepts could include compact space telescopes to look at very particular phenomena in the sky, or perhaps fundamental physics experiments that need to be done in the weightless environment of Earth orbit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17335339

[bolun]

http://www.bis.gov.uk/ukspaceagency/news-and-events/2012/Mar/uk-space-agency-guidance-on-small-missions

The UK Space Agency welcomes the initiative by ESA for a call for small mission proposals from within the Science Programme.

We encourage the UK space science community to submit good quality proposals that play to our scientific and technical strengths. However, the Agency is not able to make any funding commitments at this stage and not before the programmatic landscape with Exomars and the L1 class missions becomes clear. If national funding does become available for the small missions, it will be limited to supporting key technology elements or payloads.

[bolun]

S-class mission Letters of Intent (LOI)

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=50265

[bolun]

ESA Science Programme’s new small satellite will study super-Earths
 
19 October 2012

PR 35 2012 - Studying planets around other stars will be the focus of the new small Science Programme mission, Cheops, ESA announced today. Its launch is expected in 2017.
 
Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – will target nearby, bright stars already known to have planets orbiting around them.

Through high-precision monitoring of the star’s brightness, scientists will search for the telltale signs of a ‘transit’ as a planet passes briefly across its face.

In turn, this will allow an accurate measurement of the radius of the planet. For those planets with a known mass, the density will be revealed, providing an indication of the internal structure.

These key parameters will help scientists to understand the formation of planets from a few times the mass of the Earth – ‘super-Earths’ – up to Neptune-sized worlds.

It will also identify planets with significant atmospheres and constrain the migration of planets during the formation and evolution of their parent systems. 

Cheops is the first of a possible new class of small missions to be developed as part of ESA’s Science Programme.

“By concentrating on specific known exoplanet host stars, Cheops will enable scientists to conduct comparative studies of planets down to the mass of Earth with a precision that simply cannot be achieved from the ground,” said Professor Alvaro Giménez-Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

“The mission was selected from 26 proposals submitted in response to the Call for Small Missions in March, highlighting the strong interest of the scientific community in dedicated, quick-turnaround missions focusing on key open issues in space science.”

Possible future small missions in the Science Programme should be low cost and rapidly developed, in order to offer greater flexibility in response to new ideas from the scientific community.

With a dedicated science focus, they would provide a natural complement to the broader Medium- and Large-class missions of ESA’s Science Programme.

Cheops will be implemented as a partnership between ESA and Switzerland, with a number of other ESA Member States delivering substantial contributions.

“This continues the 40-year success story of Swiss scientists and industry at the forefront of space science,” said Professor Willy Benz, Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern.

The mission will also provide unique targets for more detailed studies of exoplanet atmospheres by the next generation of telescopes now being built, such as the ground-based European Extremely Large Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

Cheops will operate in a Sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 800 km. It has a planned mission lifetime of 3.5 years and part of the observing time will be open to the wider scientific community.

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMXFG4S18H_index_0.html

[Alpha_Centauri]

Not looking good for PLATO's chances in M3 then.

[simonbp]

Not necessarily; Cheops is an exoplanet spectroscopy mission, while Plato is a exoplanet discovery mission. Europe has such a large exoplanet community that the pressure will still be on for Plato.

[Alpha_Centauri]

CHEOPS is a photometry mission just like PLATO (and indeed very similar to COROT), the difference is it is designed for individual target selection, not surveys.  And of course far less capable.  I find it hard to believe PLATO would be selected now based on this, at least there might be a slim chance for EChO.

[bolun]

CHEOPS webpage

http://cheops.unibe.ch/

[pechisbeque]

CHEOPS is a photometry mission just like PLATO (and indeed very similar to COROT), the difference is it is designed for individual target selection, not surveys.  And of course far less capable.  I find it hard to believe PLATO would be selected now based on this, at least there might be a slim chance for EChO.

According to CHEOPS executive summary:
http://cheops.unibe.ch/images/CHEOPS_ESA_S_Proposal_Excecutive_Summary_1.pdf

"CHEOPS will:
[...]
Provide unique targets for future ground- (e.g. E-ELT) and space-based (e.g. JWST, EChO) facilities with spectroscopic capabilities. With well-determined radii and masses, the CHEOPS planets will constitute the best target sample within the solar neighbourhood for such future studies."

So EChO selection might be supported by the selection of CHEOPS.

[Alpha_Centauri]

Well that's a bit disingenuous from the summary, as CHEOPS is primarily targeting known planets they'd still be there whether it was approved or not, and still then it is only providing improved radii. Only PLATO would find a sample of enough well-characterised planets for the science of EChO to be significantly improved.

Rather predictably the PLATO consortium have just released a new newsletter arguing why it needs to be flown regardless.

http://www.oact.inaf.it/plato/PPLC/News/Entries/2012/10/23_PLATO_Newsletter_5_files/PLATO-Newsletter-5.pdf

[anton_P6]

Which LV will launch this mission?

[as58]

Which LV will launch this mission?

From http://cheops.unibe.ch/index.php/executive-summary:

The baseline orbit satisfying the science requirements is a sun-synchronous 800 km altitude orbit (SSO) with a mean local time of the ascending node of 6 a.m.. This choice optimizes uninterrupted observations and keeps thermal variations of the S/C and stray light on the satellite to a minimum as the orbital plane follows as close as possible the day/night terminator. A shared launch is envisioned which, given the mass of the S/C (< 200 kg), will be possible using a number of existing launchers (VEGA, Dnepr, Rockot).

[bolun]

ESA's webpage

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=49469