The science of EChO

Giovanna Tinetti (1) , James Y.-K. Cho , Caitlin A. Griffith (2) , Olivier Grasset (3) , Lee Grenfell , Tristan Guillot (4) , Tommi T. Koskinen , Julianne I. Moses , David Pinfield , Jonathan Tennyson (5) , Marcell Tessenyi , Robin Wordsworth (6) , Alan Aylward , Roy van Boekel , Angioletta Coradini (7) , Therese Encrenaz (8) , Ignas Snellen , Maria R. Zapatero-Osorio , Jeroen Bouwman (9) , Vincent Coudé Du Foresto , Mercedes Lopez-Morales , Ingo Mueller-Wodarg , Enric Pallé , Franck Selsis (10, 11, 12, 13) , Alessandro Sozzetti , Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (14) , Thomas Henning (15) , Michael Meyer (16) , Giuseppina Micela (17) , Ignasi Ribas (18) , Daphne Stam (19) , Mark G. Swain (20) , Oliver Krause , Marc Ollivier (21) , Emanuele Pace , Bruce Swinyard , Peter A. R. Ade , Nick Achilleos , Alberto Adriani , Craig B. Agnor (22) , Cristina Afonso , Carlos Allende Prieto , Gaspar Bakos , Robert J. Barber , Michael Barlow , Peter Bernath , Bruno Bézard (8) , Pascal Bordé (8) , Linda R. Brown (23) , Arnaud Cassan (14, 24) , Céline Cavarroc (8) , Angela Ciaravella , Charles Cockell (25) , Athéna Coustenis (8) , Camilla Danielski , Leen Decin , Remco de Kok , Olivier Demangeon , Pieter Deroo , Peter Doel , Pierre Drossart (8) , Leigh N. Fletcher (26) , Matteo Focardi , Francois Forget (6, 27) , Steve Fossey , Pascal Fouqué (28) , James Frith , Marina Galand (29) , Patrick Gaulme (8) , Jonay I. González Hernández , Davide Grassi (30) , Matt J. Griffin , Ulrich Grözinger , Manuel Guedel , Pactrick Guio , Olivier Hainaut , Robert Hargreaves , Peter H. Hauschildt , Kevin Heng , David Heyrovsky , Ricardo Hueso (31) , Pat Irwin , Lisa Kaltenegger (32) , Patrick Kervella , David Kipping , Geza Kovacs , Antonino La Barbera , Helmut Lammer (33) , Emmanuel Lellouch (8) , Giuseppe Leto , Mercedes Lopez Morales , Miguel A. Lopez Valverde , Manuel Lopez-Puertas , Christophe Lovi , Antonio Maggio (17) , Jean-Pierre Maillard (14) , Jesus Maldonado Prado , Jean-Baptiste Marquette (14) , Francisco J. Martin-Torres , Pierre Maxted , Steve Miller (34) , Sergio Molinari , David Montes , Amaya Moro-Martin , Olivier Mousis (35) , Napoléon Nguyen Tuong , Richard P. Nelson (36) , Glenn S. Orton , Eric Pantin (37) , Enzo Pascale , Stefano Pezzuto , Ennio Poretti , Raman Prinja , Loredana Prisinzano , Jean-Michel Réess (8) , Ansgar Reiners , Benjamin Samuel (21) , Jorge Sanz Forcada , Dimitar Sasselov , Giorgio Savini , Bruno Sicardy (8, 38) , Alan Smith (39) , Lars Stixrude , Giovanni Strazzulla , Gautam Vasisht , Sandrine Vinatier (8) , Serena Viti , Ingo Waldmann , Glenn J. White (40, 41) , Thomas Widemann (8) , Roger Yelle , Yuk Yung , Sergey Yurchenko

1 UCL - University College of London [London]
2 LPL - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory [Tucson]
3 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique [UMR 6112]
4 CASSIOPEE - Laboratoire de Cosmologie, Astrophysique Stellaire & Solaire, de Planétologie et de Mécanique des Fluides
5 Department of Physics and Astronomy [UCL London]
6 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
7 INAF - Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario
8 LESIA - Laboratoire d'études spatiales et d'instrumentation en astrophysique
9 DAP - Département d'Astrophysique (ex SAP)
10 LAB - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux [Pessac]
11 OASU - Observatoire aquitain des sciences de l'univers
12 UB - Université Sciences et Technologies - Bordeaux 1
13 L3AB - Laboratoire d'astrodynamique, d'astrophysique et d'aéronomie de bordeaux
14 IAP - Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
15 MPIA - Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie
16 LI2C - Liquides Ioniques et Interfaces Chargées
17 OAPa - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo
18 CSIC - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [España] = Spanish National Research Council [Spain]
19 SRON - SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research
20 University of Calgary
21 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale
22 School of Physics and Astronomy [London]
23 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
24 ARI - Astronomische Rechen-Institut [Heidelberg]
25 PSSRI - Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute [Milton Keynes]
26 AOPP - Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics [Oxford]
27 IPSL - Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace
28 LATT - Laboratoire Astrophysique de Toulouse-Tarbes
29 Blackett Laboratory
30 IFSI - Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario
31 Escuela Superior de Ingenieria
32 CfA - Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
33 IWF - Space Research Institute of Austrian Academy of Sciences
34 STS - Department of Science and Technology Studies [London]
35 UTINAM - Univers, Transport, Interfaces, Nanostructures, Atmosphère et environnement, Molécules (UMR 6213)
36 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
37 AIM (UMR7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112) - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation
38 IUF - Institut universitaire de France
39 Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
40 RAL - STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
41 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Milton Keynes]

The science of extra-solar planets is one of the most rapidly changing areas of astrophysics and since 1995 the number of planets known has increased by almost two orders of magnitude. A combination of ground-based surveys and dedicated space missions has resulted in 560-plus planets being detected, and over 1200 that await confirmation. NASA's Kepler mission has opened up the possibility of discovering Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around some of the 100,000 stars it is surveying during its 3 to 4-year lifetime. The new ESA's Gaia mission is expected to discover thousands of new planets around stars within 200 parsecs of the Sun. The key challenge now is moving on from discovery, important though that remains, to characterisation: what are these planets actually like, and why are they as they are? In the past ten years, we have learned how to obtain the first spectra of exoplanets using transit transmission and emission spectroscopy. With the high stability of Spitzer, Hubble, and large ground-based telescopes the spectra of bright close-in massive planets can be obtained and species like water vapour, methane, carbon monoxide and dioxide have been detected. With transit science came the first tangible remote sensing of these planetary bodies and so one can start to extrapolate from what has been learnt from Solar System probes to what one might plan to learn about their faraway siblings. As we learn more about the atmospheres, surfaces and near-surfaces of these remote bodies, we will begin to build up a clearer picture of their construction, history and suitability for life. The Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory, EChO, will be the first dedicated mission to investigate the physics and chemistry of Exoplanetary Atmospheres. By characterising spectroscopically more bodies in different environments we will take detailed planetology out of the Solar System and into the Galaxy as a whole. EChO has now been selected by the European Space Agency to be assessed as one of four M3 mission candidates.

Mots clés: planets and satellites: formation; planets and satellites: general; planetary systems; planetary systems: formation

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]; Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

Giovanna Tinetti, James Y.-K. Cho, Caitlin A. Griffith, Olivier Grasset, Lee Grenfell, et al.. The science of EChO. The Astrophysics of Planetary Systems: Formation, Structure, and Dynamical Evolution, 2010, Italy. pp.359-370, ⟨10.1017/S1743921311020448⟩. ⟨hal-00641239⟩