Exoplanet satellite encapsulated
Image: At Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, Cheops, is being encapsulated into the flight adapter of the Soyuz-Fregat rocket that will lift it into space on 17 December.It’s an intense period at the Spaceport, where engineers from ESA, Airbus and CNES have been preparing for launch since the satellite arrival in mid-October.This sequence of photographs, taklen on 29 November, shows the Souyuz Arianespace System for Auxiliary Payloads (ASAP-S) being carefully and progressively aligned to Cheops, then lowered onto and finally mated to the conic adapter. The mechanical integration is completed by fastening the fixation bolts. Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will observe bright stars that are already known to host planets, measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc.The mission will target stars hosting planets in the Earth- to Neptune-size range,...