Europe’s CHEOPS spacecraft will continue to investigate planets outside our solar system until at least 2026.
The European Space Agency (ESA) on March 9 that its CHEOPS will continue exoplanet-studying the mission — which includes selecting “golden target” worlds for deeper investigation by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — for at least another three years, with the potential to extend it to 2029.
Launched in December 2019 from ESA’s spaceport in French Guiana, CHEOPS (short for “Characterising Exoplanet Satellite”) is designed to study planets between Earth and Neptune as they traverse, or travel, the face of the bright stars. But it had impressive results on objects outside this size range.
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The mission took exoplanet science beyond simple discovery, to a deeper investigation into the environments of these worlds as well as precise measurements of their size and shape. Exoplanets with interesting atmospheric compositions can be passed to more powerful telescopes such as JWSTthat is, CHEOPS plays an important role in our search for planets that could possibly support life.
“In this respect, the mission was very successful,” said CHEOPS consortium head Willy Benz, a professor emeritus of astrophysics at the University of Bern in Switzerland, in a statement (opens in new tab). “The precision of CHEOPS exceeded all expectations and allowed us to determine the properties of some of the most interesting exoplanets.”
One example of CHEOPS’ contribution to science is the discovery that the gas giant WASP-103 b, first detected in 2014, has a distended, flattened shape similar to that of a rugby ball. The ESA spacecraft made the determination in 2021 by analyzing the decrease in brightness caused by the planet as it moves across the face of its star.
The compressed shape of WASP-103 b is believed to be the result of tidal interactions with its parent star, and the revelation marks the first time that the shape of an exoplanet has been well defined.
CHEOPS also had an impact closer to home. Just this year, observations from the spacecraft were used to discover that Quaoar, a dwarf planet in our solar system, is surrounded by a ring of dust. The ring is unique because it is farther from its parent body than any ring discovered before, challenging theories of how such structures form.
CHEOPS’ main science mission was initially planned to last only three and a half years, until September 2023, but ESA says the spacecraft is in excellent health after more than three years in Earth orbit.
During this time, CHEOPS has admirably withstood the rigors of space, such as cosmic ray bombardment and high-energy radiation, while on Earth its operating team worked to keep the spacecraft operational through a global pandemic.
Many exciting observational opportunities remain for CHEOPS. For example, the mission team hopes to use the spacecraft to discover the first exomoon — a moon orbiting a planet outside the solar system. Exomoons are difficult to detect because of their relatively small size and thus the faint signature they produce as they pass in front of a star, but the CHEOPS team thinks the spacecraft is sensitive enough to make of such discovery.
“We’ve only scratched the surface of CHEOPS’ capabilities. There’s a lot more science that can be done on the satellite, and we look forward to exploring it during the extension,” Benz said. “Scientists are eager to learn what surprising results CHEOPS will bring; what is certain now is that CHEOPS will continue to make new discoveries for years to come.”
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