AIRS is the infrared spectroscopic instrument of ARIEL: Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission adopted in November 2020 as the Cosmic Vision M4 ESA mission and planned to be launched in 2029 by an Ariane 6 from Kourou toward a large amplitude orbit around L2 for a 4-year mission. Within the scientific payload, AIRS will perform transit spectroscopy of over 1000 exoplanets to complete a statistical survey, including gas giants, Neptunes, super-Earths and Earth-size planets around a wide range of host stars. All these collected spectroscopic data will be a major asset to answer the key scientific questions addressed by this mission: what are exoplanets made of? How do planets and planetary systems form? How do planets and their atmospheres evolve over time? The AIRS instrument is based on two independent channels covering 1.95-3.90 µm (CH0) and 3.90-7.80 µm (CH1) wavelength ranges with prism-based dispersive elements producing spectra of low resolutions R>100 in CH0 and R>30 in CH1 on two independent detectors. The spectrometer is designed to provide a Nyquist-sampled spectrum in both spatial and spectral directions to limit the sensitivity of measurements to the jitter noise and intra pixels pattern during the long (10 hours) transit spectroscopy exposures. A full instrument overview will be presented covering the thermo-mechanical design of the instrument functioning in a 60 K environment, up to the detection and acquisition chain of both channels based on 2 HgCdTe detectors actively cooled to below 42 K. This overview will present updated information of phase C studies, in particular on the assembly and testing of prototypes that are highly representative of the future engineering model that will be used as an instrument-level qualification model.
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