Ariel: Science, Mission & Community 2026
The Ariel Mission Consortium and ESA Ariel Science Team are delighted to invite the international scientific community to attend the Ariel Open Conference 2026, hosted at the ESA Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre, in the Harwell Campus in the UK.
The conference “Ariel: Science, Mission & Community 2026” will provide an overall summary of the Ariel’s science, instrument and operations and present the many activities that the Ariel team have planned to engage the science community at large and the public. These include educational and citizen-science programs such as ExoClock and the Ariel Data Challenges. Contributions and feedback from the attendees are welcomed through oral and poster presentations (submit your abstract here), and focused panel discussions.
About Ariel – The Ariel space telescope, to be launched at the end of this decade as part of the ESA Science Programme, is the first mission dedicated to the determination of the chemical composition and thermal structure of hundreds of exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System. Ariel has been conceived to deliver a spectroscopic survey of ~ 1000 transiting exoplanets, covering simultaneously the range 0.5-7.8 micron, and probing uniformly the gamut of planetary and stellar parameters.
The Ariel payload is developed by a consortium of more than 50+ institutes from 16 ESA countries, which include the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Czech Republic, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, with important contributions from NASA, JAXA and CSA.
More information about Ariel can be found here
Venue & Dates
The event will be held between 17 to 19 March 2026 in the ESA’s Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre, located beside ESA ECSAT, Harwell Campus.
Venue: ESA Magali Vaissiere Conference Centre
Fermi Avenue
Harwell Campus
Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0FD
United Kingdom
How to get there
Registration fees include coffee breaks and lunches. Early registration fee (until November 10th) is €275. Late registration fee (10 November – 15 February) is €350. A limited number of discounted fees/fee waivers is available for students and early career scientists. Applications are accepted until November 10th using the abstract submission page.
Looking forward to seeing you at the conference in March 2026!
Questions? You can contact us at openconference2026 at arielmission.space
Agenda
The full program will be updated closer to the conference start.
Abstract submission is now open. Abstracts for contributed talks will be considered until November 30th.
Accommodations
A list of accommodations close to the conference centre is available here.