Airbus and CNES engineer inside the Souyuz Arianespace System for Auxiliary Payloads (ASAP-S) prior to the encapsulation of ESA’s Cheops satellite (not visible in this photo). The photo was taken on 28 November at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Scheduled for launch on 17 December, 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.