Contribution to ARIEL Spectroscopy of Exoplanets (CASE) is a detector subsystem contribution to an infrared spectrometer instrument for the planned European ARIEL space telescope.
It is being developed by NASA as a contribution to the European Space Agency (ESA) project to add scientific capabilities to the space telescope to observe the chemical composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets,[1] as well exoplanetary metallicities.
The addition of CASE will enable ARIEL to observe clouds and hazes, which help establish planetary climate, and provide a more comprehensive picture of the exoplanet atmospheres ARIEL observes.
[1] The detectors and its associated electronics are the same that NASA is contributing to ESA's Euclid mission,[1] being a mosaic of 4×4 Teledyne H2RG detectors sensitive to near-infrared light radiation (1.0-2.0 μm) with 65 million pixels.
The Principal Investigator of CASE is Mark Swain, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).