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The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission (ARIEL) is one of the three present candidates for the ESA M4 (the fourth medium mission) launch opportunity. The proposed Payload will perform a large unbiased spectroscopic survey from space concerning the nature of exoplanets atmospheres and their interiors to determine the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems. ARIEL will observe a large number (>500) of warm and hot transiting gas giants, Neptunes and super-Earths around a wide range of host star types, targeting planets hotter than 600 K to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres. It will exploit primary and secondary transits spectroscopy in the 1.2-8 um spectral range and broad-band photometry in the optical and Near IR (NIR). The main instrument of the ARIEL Payload is the IR Spectrometer (AIRS) providing low-resolution spectroscopy in two IR channels: Channel 0 (CH0) for the 1.95-3.90 um band and Channel 1 (CH1) for the 3.90-7.80 um range. It is located at the intermediate focal plane of the telescope and common optical system and it hosts two IR sensors and two cold front-end electronics (CFEE) for detectors readout, a well defined process calibrated for the selected target brightness and driven by the Payload's Instrument Control Unit (ICU)., Experimental Astronomy, Special Issue on ARIEL, (2017)

The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanets Large-survey (ARIEL)1 Mission has been recently selected by ESA as the fourth medium-class Mission (M4) in the framework of the Cosmic Vision Program. The goal of ARIEL is to investigate, thanks to VIS photometry and IR spectroscopy, the atmospheres of several hundreds of planets orbiting nearby stars in order to address the fundamental questions on how planetary systems form and evolve.2 During its four-years mission, ARIEL will observe several hundreds of exoplanets ranging from Jupiter- and Neptune-size down to super-Earth and Earth-size with its 1 meter-class telescope.3 The analysis of spectra and photometric data will allow to extract the chemical fingerprints of gases and condensates in the planets atmospheres, including the elemental composition for the most favorable targets. It will also enable the study of thermal and scattering properties of the atmosphere as the planet orbits around its parent star.