Updates World's 1st L5 mission: ESA Sun-monitoring Space Weather Mission

[Nicholas Kang]

In this animation, ESA’s future space weather satellite is seen positioned away from the Earth–Sun line and monitoring a coronal mass ejection from the Sun.

The agency is now studying design options for stationing a dedicated space weather mission at the L5 Lagrange point, where gravity and the orbital motion of the spacecraft, the Sun and our planet combine to create a stable location. From here, the spacecraft would view solar features before they rotate into view of Earth.

The spacecraft's instruments are expected to build on those flown on earlier ESA and joint solar missions, such as SOHO, Stereo, Proba-2 and Solar Orbiter.

Where No Mission Has Gone Before

Living near a star is risky business, and positioning a spacecraft near the Sun is a very good way to observe rapidly changing solar activity and deliver early warning of possibly harmful space weather. ESA is now looking at doing just that.

“One of the best ways to observe rapidly changing solar activity is to position a dedicated spacecraft slightly away from our direct line to the Sun, so that it can observe the ‘side’ of our star before it rotates into view,” says Juha-Pekka Luntama, responsible for space weather at ESA’s mission control centre, Darmstadt, Germany.

Today, ESA began studies to examine exactly this concept. Four European industrial and scientific consortiums including leading experts on space systems and instrument design will develop concepts for flying a mission to L5.

Based on the results, ESA will select a final design in about 18 months.

This space weather mission would provide data for operational applications such as forecasts and nowcasts of solar activity.

These are part of ESA’s Space Weather Service Network, which will issue warnings and alerts to scientific, commercial and civil customers when solar activity poses any risk to critical civil and economic activities.

Source: ESA