Airbus to build Ariel telescope to examine exoplanets' chemical composition
European Space Agency’s mission to study chemical composition of 1000 exoplanets will launch in 2029
The first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition of exoplanets is one step closer, after the European Space Agency (Esa) signed a contract with Airbus to build a new space telescope.
The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (Ariel) mission is scheduled to launch in 2029 and will study around 1000 planets to learn how they formed. Esa notes that the project will ‘fill a significant gap in our knowledge of how the planet’s chemistry is linked to the environment where it formed, or if and how the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s evolution’.