Giovanna Tinetti
Ariel Mission Update

Good morning, everybody.
I would like to start by really thanking you for this invitation today.
It's a great pleasure to be here in person also, because it gives me really the opportunity of missing this community and knowing better about what's going on.
And I was quite in awe to to see all the initiatives proposed in participation, inclusiveness, something that is very high in the priority. Also the area collaboration.
So what is aerial?
So aerial is a space stalls code that will be launched in 2029 by the European Space Agency.
We have proposed there in 2015 and then he was selecting 2018 and finally adopting 2020.
So it will be launching L2 and it's a 1M class telescope.
The unique selling point of this mission that is dedicated to the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is to be able to simultaneously cover the wavelength between .5 Micron down to 7.8 Micron.
And so we can be very efficient at observing planets and from L2.
We can also be quite deficient in terms of visibility and we're aiming at looking at about 1000 exoplanet atmospheres. We want to include a very diverse list of planets and stars, making sure that we have the broad picture of all these exoplanets. And so we really want.
To probe the parameter space so before the planets on the star and the orbit.
But when we're talking about Ariel, it's not just the flying hardware, it's also the human factor behind the scene that, in my view, is super important. And at the moment, the area Collaboration Area consortium is included more than 600 scientists and engineers from 16 ISA countries and.
We have a very important contribution from NASA chucks and the Canadian Space Agency, and they will leave to devise later on to talk more about the NASA participation.
That is certainly very critical.
So given that we we want to look at the very large number of planets and be able to extract also a lot of information, we need to be very efficient in the way we're applying our survey. And So what we thought of is a sort of wedding cake.
Type approach where we go first to a broad survey, a relatively low resolution of about 1000 exoplanets, and then we select out of those.
Half of those targets to go for a a a deeper sort of criteria.
As an intuitive detail of the atmosphere.
But we also want to select.
A smaller sample of planets and really keep observing them through time to understand much better the properties through time and we clearly also want to include phase go.
And see whether we will see some transitions in terms of clouds or chemistry.
Clearly, planets are 3D, very complicated objects. We shouldn't forecast for that.
And also stars, of course. And so we want to make sure that we also monitor in with the time that we have available.
This variability of his space and time and this phase curve spectroscopy will be very helpful to obtain that, but also repeated observations of the same target through time to really understand how this.
This viability played out there is clear lot of work.
Thus, we need to do in the next four to five years before launch, and in particular we need to be very prepared in terms of available data for spectroscopy, for chemistry for clad parameters, because we'll have to use all this data to interpret the observation of Ariel in.
All this work that is being done and published, but also available through databases, I put a QR code so you can have access to that.
It's clearly very useful not just for for aerial.
Web and many other facilities currently operated or also in the future, but most of the effort at the moment that we are doing is really put into.
Aerial target characterizations we we want to understand much better all the planetary and stellar and orbiter parameters or the Arkansas targets. And we have a public available our what we call Mission candidate sample. The long list of planetary candidates for aerial.
Kind of access to that also through the cure code and of course we have a plan on how we want to use this mission candidate and sample and and what type of plans we want to observe and how. But of course, this plan will keep evolving until launch.
And even beyond.
Because we want to make sure always that the the science return is maximized.
But what we can certainly do in the meantime is really making sure that we monitor all the stars that are hosting.
Planets that will be observed by.
Very important to understand better their parameters, the metallicity.
Masses of the star Radiant, so on and so forth. And we have a number of programs that are ongoing above from space underground to do that.
Hannah already did an excellent job before in convincing you why the masses are important.
They certainly are for atmospheric characterization, and in particular, given that among our best targets are the test targets, they are very bright.
And this is really excellent for a mission like Ariel. We want to make sure that again before launch, if possible.
Most of these masses will be well characterized and that's where really the help of the US community through NASA is super important because both through the stellar characterization, but also characterization of masses, there is so much work that we need to do and really welcome, I think will.
Be really game changing. Having the US contribution on that and I will leave David of course to talk more to talk more about.
NASA call to enable the Community in the US to do so.
But also we need to be aware of the F Emeritus, so we don't want to waste time in point of the star when the plant is actually not transited or not eclipsing.
And so we can't afford that.
And so that's how we have involved the community, the global community, amateur astronomers asking for their help, and they've been really amazing in helping us.
Refining Mercedes emeritus of some of the targets that we look into at the moment, we're talking about say over 1000 participants for many countries and most of them are amateurs.
But we also have a program that is connecting some of the telescope time to some of the early career that do not access otherwise to to telescopes.
So although this is super important from a scientific and mission perspective, is also an excellent example of broadly in participation.
All this data that we have, we are collecting in this year, we want to make sure that the entire Community will access to this and so we are preparing a website that for the moment is not yet public available to the entire community, but we'll be very soon.
Where we're we will list basically all the the target candidates, but also all the efforts that we're doing in trying to characterize those.
And.
Anybody accessing the the website will will also access to our instruments.
So they can work out what is the amount of time that is needed for aerial to observe a certain targets and so have the full information buff to look at the data, but also to propose new programs. Given that ISA will have also some open call on top.
Of the core survey that is done by Ariel.
And finally, in terms of engaging participation with the public.
I mentioned the human factor, but I think we shouldn't really forget aiai can be extremely important and useful, and I should perhaps stress explainable AI.
We really believe that having the support of the again global community that is working on AI and explainable AI in finding good solutions for looking at the data.
Mission is operating is super important and that's why we have been organizing early Sunday to challenge and the one in 2024 in particular has been really incredibly successful because we had the opportunity not only to.
To be on Europe's discovery challenge, but also to have the support from Kego who provided 50K dollar to the winners.
So clearly that attracted a lot of interest and here you see the leaderboard. The two winners actually.
The students and the PhD students from University of Tokyo.
So they were able to to surpass me, know the other solutions coming from other companies.
So perhaps my last message before I wrote up to conclusion and give the floor to to to David so he can tell you much more about the opportunities for the US contribution. I just want to read to stress that that.
We are really keen to have a very open policy for aerial, so when it comes to data.
Most of the data will be released immediately after quality control and this will happen in particular during the science demonstration phase.
So all the data taking that will be immediately available, but also when it comes to the nominal science operation phase, all the tier one data, the one that are collected for the 1000, will be immediately available and for all the others we have six months.
Time after quality control at the moment is just the phase curves and the Tier 4 that have one year, but we are looking into reducing this amount of time in particular because there is perhaps the interest to increase the number of phase goes and we don't want to.
Do this.
The expenses of the community and we have also very strongly committen to open source software and explain on AI and so clearly we want to make sure that all this work that is being done by the consortium will be available and is available to the Community and with.
This I leave it with the conclusion, and perhaps before I leave the floor to to David also mention the Open Conference that is being planned for the spring 2026 and the entire Community will be invited.
And once more, thank you for your time and attention today and thank you for having allowed me to participate your meeting.