Ariel is the M4 mission of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Program 2015-2025, whose aim is to characterize by lowresolution transit spectroscopy the atmospheres of over one thousand warm and hot exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. It has been selected by ESA in March 2018 and adopted in November 2020 to be flown, then, in 2029. It is the first survey mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of the atmospheres of hundreds of transiting exoplanets, in order to enable planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System. The Payload (P/L) is based on a cold section (PLM – Payload Module) working at cryogenic temperatures and a warm section, located within the Spacecraft (S/C) Service Vehicle Module (SVM) and hosting five warm units operated at ambient temperature (253-313 K). The P/L and its electrical, electronic and data handling architecture has been designed and optimized to perform transit spectroscopy from space during primary and secondary planetary eclipses in order to achieve a large set of unbiased observations to shed light and fully understand the nature of exoplanets atmospheres, retrieving information about planets interior and determining the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems.
The FGS is one of two scientific instruments on board the ESA ARIEL space telescope, which ESA plans to launch in 2029. The aim of the mission is to characterize the atmospheres of several hundred different exoplanets. The FGS is an opto-electronic instrument – a photometer and a near infra-red spectrometer. Although FGS stands for Fine Guidance System, in fact it has two main goals: to deliver scientific data of observed exoplanets, precisely speaking, their atmospheres, and to support the spacecraft’s AOCS with very precise pointing and guiding towards observation objects. This paper presents an overview of the current FGS design and implementation. The instrument is in the middle step between successfully passed iPDR and upcoming iCDR. Up to now, the team successfully built a prototype of the instrument, and is working on the manufacturing of the engineering and engineering-qualification models.
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