ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, was selected as the fourth medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme. During its 4-year mission, ARIEL will study what exoplanets are made of, how they formed and how they evolve, by surveying a diverse sample of about 1000 extrasolar planets, simultaneously in visible and infrared wavelengths. It is the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of hundreds of transiting exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System.

ARIEL has launched in April 2019 a global competition series to find innovative solutions for the interpretation and analysis of exoplanet data (https://ariel-datachallenge.azurewebsites.net).

The first ARIEL Data Challenge invites professional and amateur data scientists around the world to use Machine Learning (ML) to remove noise from exoplanet observations caused by star-spots and by instrumentation.
A second ARIEL Data Challenge that focuses on the retrieval of spectra from simulations of cloudy and cloud-free super-Earth and hot-Jupiter data was also launched in April. A further data analysis challenge to create pipelines for faster, more effective processing of the raw data gathered by the mission will be launched in June at the EWASS conference in Lyon.

Outcomes from all three ARIEL Data Challenges will be discussed in a dedicated splinter at the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019.