Farewell, Cheops
Members of the ESA Cheops project office bid farewell to the spacecraft, enclosed in the launcher fairing, at Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, after the traditional signing of the fairing sticker. Cheops is scheduled for launch on 17 December.
In the lower left corner, from left to right: Joel Asquier (Platform Principal Engineer), Nicola Rando (Project Manager) and Jan Rautakoski (Product Assurance). The photo was taken on 12 December.The fairing sticker features, among others, the ESA and Cheops mission logos and the winning design of the Cheops fairing sticker competition, on the left, created by Denis Vrenko.
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.
