It is expected that the ongoing and future space-borne planet survey missions including TESS, PLATO will detect thousands of small to medium-sized planets via the transit technique, including over a hundred habitable terrestrial rocky planets. To conduct detailed study of these terrestrial planets, particularly those cool ones with wide orbits, the exoplanet community has proposed various followup missions. The currently proposed ESA mission ARIEL is a first step for this purpose, and it is capable of the characterizations of planets down to warm super-Earths. The NASA HabEx and LUVOIR missions are mega projects to further tackle down to habitable rocky planets, which are now merged and to be launched in 2040-2045 if approved. In the meanwhile, China is funding a concept study of a 6-m class UV to optical space telescope named Tianling (a Chinese word meaning neighbours in the sky) that aims to start its operation around 2035 and last for 5+ years. Tianling will be mainly dedicated for the characterization rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZ) around nearby stars. We describe briefly the concept study of this mission and propose a baseline requirement of the telescope and instrumental parameters based on our preliminary simulation results.
A new era is expected to arrive around 2030 with a pool of exoplanets amounting to about ten thousand, including mainly small to medium-sized planets, and over a hundred habitable terrestrial rocky planets, thanks to the space-borne transit surveys by the Kepler, TESS and PLATO missions, and ground-based transit and radial-velocity (RV) surveys. The exoplanet community has proposed various missions for detailed characterization of the terrestrial planets, but it is quite technique-demanding and time-consuming especially for those with wide orbits. The currently proposed ESA mission ARIEL is a first step for this purpose, and it is powerful for the characterizations of planets down to warm super-Earths. The NASA HabEx and LUVOIR missions are mega projects to further tackle down to habitable rocky planets, and will be in operation after 2035 if approved. In the meanwhile, China is funding a concept study of a 4-6m space telescope named HABITATS ( HABItable Terrestrial planetary ATmospheric Surveyor). HABITATS will be dedicated for the characterization of habitable rocky planets around nearby stars, which aims to start its operation within the next 10-15 years and last for 5+ years. We describe briefly the preliminary concept study of this mission and propose a baseline telescope and instrument parameter values based on our simulation results. International collaborations from various institutes and research groups are welcome to join this ambitious effort in the aspects of science, instrumentation, platform, funding resources.
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