Ms. Alex Davies Profile

Alex Davies

at STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab

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Publications (1)

Proceedings Article | 23 August 2024 Presentation + Paper

The Ariel payload design post-PDR

Paul Eccleston, Andrew Caldwell, Georgia Bishop, Lucile Desjonqueres, Rachel Drummond, Alex Davidson, Martin Whalley, Martin Caldwell, Chris Pearson, Caroline Simpson, Sandy Fok, Davide Bruzzi, Alex Davies, Mark Anderson, Pranav Umesh, Enzo Pascale, Gianluca Morgante, Mauro Focardi, Giorgio Savini, Marc Ollivier, Miroslaw Rataj, Giuseppe Malaguti, Giovanna Tinetti, Andrea Tozzi, Paolo Chioetto, Emanuele Pace, Paola Zuppella, Giampaolo Preti, Christophe Serre, Jose Gomez, Gustavo Alonso, Javier Perez, Neil Bowles, Keith Nowicki, Jérôme Martignac, Michel Berthé, Pascale Danto, Martin Crook, Matthew Hills, Charles Padley, Semu Makinen, Zsolt Kovacs, Janos Szoke, Peter Szirovicza, Mateusz Sobiecki, Konrad Skup, Piotr Wawer, Roland Ottensamer, Warren Holmes, Renaud Goullioud, Markus Czupalla, Niels Christian Jessen, Soren Pedersen, Tom Ray, Deirdre Coffey, Lukas Steiger, Carlos Compostizo, Ricardo Machado, Andrea Bocchieri, Lorenzo Mugnai, Stephan Birkmann, Salma Fahmy, Ludovic Puig, Delphine Jollet, Anders Svedevall, Thierry Tirolien, Jean-Christophe Salvignol, Jean-Philippe Halain

Proceedings Volume 13092, 130921B (2024) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019713

KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Design, Equipment, Space operations, Sensors, Spectroscopy, Interfaces, Infrared spectroscopy, Aluminum, Optical benches

Read Abstract +

The Ariel space mission will characterize spectroscopically the atmospheres of a large and diverse sample of hundreds of exoplanets. Through the study of targets with a wide range of planetary parameters (mass, density, equilibrium temperature) and host star types the origin for the diversity observed in known exoplanets will be better understood. Ariel is an ESA Medium class science mission (M4) with a spacecraft bus developed by industry under contract to ESA, and a Payload provided by a consortium of national funding agencies in ESA member states, plus contributions from NASA, the CSA and JAXA. The payload is based on a 1-meter class telescope operated at below 60K, built all in Aluminium, which feeds two science instruments. A multi-channel photometer and low-resolution spectrometer instrument (the FGS, Fine Guidance System instrument) operating from 0.5 – 1.95 microns in wavelength provides both guidance information for stabilizing the spacecraft pointing as well as vital scientific information from spectroscopy in the near-infrared and photometry in the visible channels. The Ariel InfraRed Spectrometer (AIRS) instrument provides medium resolution spectroscopy from 1.95 – 7.8 microns wavelength coverage over two instrument channels. Supporting subsystems provide the necessary mechanical, thermal and electronics support to the cryogenic payload. This paper presents the overall picture of the payload for the Ariel mission. The payload tightly integrates the design and analysis of the various payload elements (including for example the integrated STOP analysis of the Telescope and Common Optics) in order to allow the exacting photometric stability requirements for the mission to be met. The Ariel payload has passed through the Preliminary Design Review (completed in Q2 2023) and is now developing and building prototype models of the Telescope, Instruments and Subsystems (details of which will be provided in other contributions to this conference). This paper will present the current status of the development work and outline the future plans to complete the build and verification of the integrated payload.

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