CHEOPS

CHEOPS ( for Character Ising Exoplanets Satellite ) is a planned mission of ESA with the main objective to characterize exoplanets in the vicinity of the Earth and investigate. It will be observed for about 500 stars with known planetary systems from an Earth orbit.

The probe is the first of a possible series of S- class missions to be within a relatively short time ( 4 years) and realized with a limited budget. Like the ESA announced on 19 October 2012, the mission was selected from a total of 26 proposals that had been requested in the spring. Main partner of ESA is Switzerland, other partners include Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, Austria and Sweden.

CHEOPS is to track it by high-precision brightness measurements with a telescope of 30 cm aperture and 1.2 m long passages of exoplanets prior to their central star and from it determine the size, mass and potential atmospheres. Thus, the image of the star as many of its CCD pixel covers, and the investigation as closely as possible, is the telescope is out of focus in his studies.

The 200 kg satellite is caused in a 800 km sun-synchronous orbit high (SSO). However, also boasts a 1,200 km high in SSO or a GTO web is considered high perigee at 10,000 km altitude and an apogee at about 36,000 km altitude. CHEOPS to transmit the scientific data in the X-band, telemetry and control, however, to use the S-band, but which also serves as a backup for the data transmission. The telescope will be protected in the space with the use of an approximately semi-circular sun shield which is perpendicular to the axis of the satellite, in front of the solar heat. Also the shield solar cell carries on its sunlit side. CHEOPS is 2017Vorlage: / start Future In 3 years, the lifetime of the satellite is to be 3.5 years.