Paper 14145-11
Paper 14145-11
The ARIEL telescope assembly: technical solutions and tests of an aluminum based telescope toward the flight model
5 July 2026 • 13:50 - 14:10 CEST | Room B4-M3
Abstract
Ariel will conduct a survey of the atmospheres of known exoplanets through transit spectroscopy. The Ariel telescope consists of an off-axis, unobscured Cassegrain telescopein the waveband between 0.5 and 7.8 µm, and operating at cryogenic temperatures.It consists of a primary parabolic mirror with an elliptical aperture of 1.1 m of major axis, followed by a hyperbolic secondary, a parabolic recollimating tertiary and a flat folding mirror. In this article, an update regarding the development of the Telescope is provided, focusing on the critical tests and technological developments, in particular: the first measurement of the WFE of a model of M1 at 0 gravity level with nm level precision, thermal conductance measurement of the mechanical interfaces of M1, details regarding the improvement in the Diamond Turning and, finally, an overview at System Level of the development of the Engineering Model of the Telescope Assembly.
Presenter
Paolo Picchi
INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri (Italy)
I graduated cum laude in Astrophysics at University of Pisa. I worked four years in the space industry in designing and testing optical systems, from miniaturized microscopes to multispectral illuminators. Since 2024, I work at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Arcetri, Florence, as a researcher on optical, infrared and cryogenic instrumentation for ground and space based telescopes. I currently cover the role of Technical Lead of the Telescope Assembly of the ARIEL space mission, the first big space telescope made entirely in aluminum. Additionally, I also cover the role of AIV manager for the subsystem Integral Field Unit of the ANDES instrument, a high resolution spectrograph that will be installed on ELT (Extremely Large Telescope). My current know-how covers mainly the area of spectroscopy, interferometry and polarimetry, for both ground and space telescopes and instrumentations.