CHEOPS Science Operations

presenting author: Mathias Beck, Mathias.Beck@unige.ch
for the CHEOPS mission consortium

CHEOPS has been selected by ESA for study as the first S-class mission. Mission adoption by the SPC is foreseen for February 2014. Launch is planned for end of 2017.

The CHaracterizing ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) will be the first mission dedicated to search for transits by means of ultrahigh precision photometry on bright stars already known to host planets. By being able to point at nearly any location on the sky, it will provide the unique capability of determining accurate radii for a subset of those planets for which the mass has already been estimated from ground-based spectroscopic surveys. It will also provide precision radii for new planets discovered by the next generation ground-based transits surveys (Neptune-size and smaller).

A consortium of 10 ESA member states is being established under the lead of Switzerland. As for many ESA missions, the CHEOPS consortium is responsible to develop the scientific instrument. Contrary to other ESA missions the Mission and Science Operations are as well fully under the responsibility of the consortium. Mission Operations are developed and operated under the responsibility of the United Kingdom. Science Operations are under the responsibility of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

The CHEOPS Science Ground Segment has three major entities

- the Science Operations Centre,
- the Instrument Team and
- the Calibration Team

Together with the other entities of the Science Ground Segment and the CHEOPS Science Team, the Science Operations Centre has the tasks 

- to define the instrument planning.
- to process, archive and distribute the mission data.
- to perform in depth instrument performance analysis and to provide corrective measure as needed.
- to perform the instrument on-ground and in-flight calibration.

To achieve these tasks, 5 ESA member countries are participating in the development of the Science Operations Centre. Individual software components will be developed and maintained by the different SOC partners. The University of Geneva will integrate the components and operate them during the 3.5 years of CHEOPS mission operations.

Another important aspect of the CHEOPS mission is the 'Open Time Program'. 20% of the total observation time will be open to guest observers who will be able to propose their specific observation program. A proposal handling and time allocation process is currently being defined together with ESA.

I will reflect upon the definition of the CHEOPS Science Operations using the experience gained from other ESA space missions like INTEGRAL, Planck, Gaia, Euclid or ground based  instruments to which the University of Geneva provided or will provide elements of the Science Ground Segment at various levels.