What is "cheops"

Cheops can refer to:

• Cheops, the Hellenized name of Khufu, an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh
• CHEOPS, a planned space telescope
• Khéops, a French disk jockey

CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) is a planned European space telescope for the study of the formation of extrasolar planets.

Foreseen to be launch-ready by the end of 2017, the mission aims to bring an optical Ritchey–Chrétien telescope with an aperture of 30 cm, mounted on a standard small satellite platform, into a Sun-synchronous orbit of about altitude. For the planned mission duration of 3.5 years, CHEOPS is to examine known transiting exoplanets orbiting bright and nearby stars.