ESA Science & Technology - Phase 0 studies completed for the M4 Cosmic Vision candidate missions

The Phase 0 studies, which cover initial feasibility studies and the consolidation of requirements, were performed at ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) by dedicated engineering teams with the support of the candidate missions' Study Science Teams, which are composed of experts from the science community. The studies are based on the proposals that were submitted to ESA in response to the M4 Call.

The three missions address the science of exoplanets, plasma physics and the X-ray Universe: ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, will determine the chemical composition and physical conditions of the atmosphere for several hundred exoplanets; THOR, a plasma mission, will investigate the physical mechanisms underlying the energy dissipation of turbulent fluctuations in plasmas; and XIPE, an X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer, will provide high-sensitivity polarization measurements for X-ray sources, to discover more about the behaviour of matter under extreme conditions.

The proposals from the science community and the results of the recent CDF studies (in the form of Internal Final Presentations, or IFPs) can be found at the links below. Dedicated Phase 0 reports are in preparation for each of the studies and these will be published at a later stage.

The next step is to perform industrial Phase A studies for each of the three candidate missions, with the aim of selecting one mission to continue to Phase B1 after the Mission Selection Review in June 2017. Results of the Phase A studies will be published in the form of so-called Yellow Books around June 2017, following the timeline given in the table below: