CHEOPS - Small Sub-Jovian Characterisation Mission from ESA

CHEOPS Will Study Super-Earths
http://spaceref.com/extrasolar-planets/cheops-will-study-super-earths.html

Quote :

Studying planets around other stars will be the focus of the new Small-class 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.

Quote :

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.

Mission website: http://cheops.unibe.ch/

Not to be confused with ZIMPOL/CHEOPS...

How does this project influence possible development of telescopes like Echo or TESS?
Will it prove useful in possible search for planets in Alpha Centauri?

ExA wrote:

How does this project influence possible development of telescopes like Echo or TESS?
Will it prove useful in possible search for planets in Alpha Centauri?

It is an ESA mission, so TESS will not be affected. But, in my opinion, the approval of CHEOPS is bad news for Echo.

I suppose this telescope can detect transits of earth sized planets in Alpha Centauri. The new planet has about ten percent probability to transit.

CHEOPS executive summary states that is designed to support Echo

http://cheops.unibe.ch/index.php/executive-summary
Provide unique targets for future ground- (e.g. E-ELT) and space-based (e.g. JWST, EChO) facilities with spectroscopic capabilities.

But I am afraid that two dedicated exoplanet missions might be a bit optimistic, especially as E-ELT will be developed right after Cheops will finish its work.

A first paper from the CHEOPS team :
http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.2270


CHEOPS will fill the gap in transit follow-up capability for bright stars in the sky. It will target approx.
500 targets of interest in its 3.5 year mission. CHEOPS will:

 -Determine the mass-radius relation in a planetary mass range for which only a handful of data exist
and to a precision never before achieved.

- Identify planets with significant atmospheres as a function of their mass, distance to the star, and
stellar parameters.

 -Place constraints on possible planet migration paths followed during formation and evolution for
planets where the clear presence of a massive gaseous envelope cannot be discerned.

 -Detect the phase variations of a handful of known Hot Jupiter in order to study the physical mechanisms
and eciency of the energy transport from the dayside to the night side of the planet.

- 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.

 - Offer up to 20% of open time to the community to be allocated through competitive scientific review.
CHEOPS will have the capability to provide precise photometric measurements (light curves) of a
large number of variable light sources in the universe.

Up to which distance in light years will this 30 cm space telescope be able to detect Super-Earths (maximum 10 Earth masses)?

See this thread.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=47786

CHEOPS performance for exomoons: The detectability of exomoons by using optimal decision algorithm

http://sci.esa.int/cheops/58971-exoplanet-mission-gets-ticket-to-ride/

A Soyuz rocket operated by Arianespace from Europe's spaceport in Kourou will boost ESA's upcoming exoplanet satellite into space

While the exact launch date remains to be confirmed, CHEOPS is expected to be ready by the end of 2018 for shipping to Kourou, with all testing completed

http://sci.esa.int/cheops/59825-9-the-cheops-scientific-instrument-is-complete/

The scientific instrument at the heart of the CHEOPS mission has been fully assembled, marking an important milestone in the development of this small, fast-track exoplanet-characterising mission

http://spaceref.com/extrasolar-planets/cheops-space-telescope-leaves-the-university-of-bern.html

- Construction of the space telescope CHEOPS is finished
- CHEOPS is to be ready to launch in early 2019
- A Soyuz rocket will launch it together with a larger Italian radar satellite into a 700-kilometer orbit

Testing CHEOPS...
http://spaceref.com/exoplanets/exoplanet-surveyor-cheops-undergoes-testing.html

http://sci.esa.int/cheops/61125-15-a-jigsaw-falling-into-place-cheops-end-to-end-testing-complete/

After a successful series of tests, the team that will operate the CHEOPS mission is ready for the activities to follow the satellite launch later this year. The CHEOPS satellite has been allocated a launch window between 15 October and 14 November

Expected performances of the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS). I. Photometric performances from ground-based calibration
https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.01636

Quote :

The Characterising Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) is a space mission designed to perform photometric observations of bright stars to obtain precise radii measurements of transiting planets. The high-precision photometry of CHEOPS relies on careful on-ground calibration of its payload. For that purpose, intensive pre-launch campaigns of measurements were carried out to calibrate the instrument and characterise its photometric performances. We report on main results of these campaigns, provide a complete analysis of data sets and estimate in-flight photometric performance by mean of end-to-end simulation. The on-ground photometric stability of the instrument is found to be of the order of 15 parts per million over 5 hours. Our end-to-end simulation shows that measurements of planet-to-star radii ratio with CHEOPS can be determined with a precision of 2% for a Neptune-size planet transiting a K-dwarf star and 5% for an Earth-size planet orbiting a Sun-like star. It corresponds to signal-to-noise ratios on the transit depths of 25 and 10 respectively, allowing the characterisation and detection of these planets. The pre-launch CHEOPS performances are shown to be compliant with the mission requirements.

Launch in a few hours !!!

https://twitter.com/exo_cast/status/1206598717962358787

Launch was scrubbed. Trying again tonight.

Successful launch.

https://sci.esa.int/web/cheops/-/switching-on-the-cheops-instrument

The science instrument on ESA's Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, CHEOPS, was successfully activated on 8 January, marking the beginning of the mission's in-orbit commissioning.
(...)
On 9 January, with the telescope cover still closed, the instrument was used to obtain the first 'dark image' – an image produced without receiving any light from external sources – to demonstrate that it is performing as expected.
Further tests on the satellite and instrument will continue over the coming weeks, and eventually the telescope cover will be opened by the end of January – a key milestone after which the instrument can be used to take its first images of the sky.