| Astrophysics (Index) | About |
ARIEL (for Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) is a planned space observatory to perform infrared transit-spectrography observations of 1000 transiting extra-solar planets, to study their atmosphere. It is a European Space Agency (ESA) initiative, aiming for a 2029 launch and a four year mission. It would reside at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangian point.
Note that some past satellites were named Ariel: Great Britain's Ariel Program of the 1960s-1980s included six satellites, two of which, Ariel 5 and Ariel 6 carried out astronomical research.