# The SCM instrument for the ESA Plasma Observatory mission

Olivier Le Contel, Matthieu Kretzschmar, Alessandro Retino, Fatima Mehrez, Guillaume Jannet, Dominique Alison, Claire Revillet, Laurent Mirioni, Clémence Agrapart, Gérard Sou, et al.

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Olivier Le Contel, Matthieu Kretzschmar, Alessandro Retino, Fatima Mehrez, Guillaume Jannet, et al. The SCM instrument for the ESA Plasma Observatory mission. European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2025 (EGU25), EGU, Apr 2025, Vienna (AUSTRIA), Austria. 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-16777. hal-05338732

HAL Id: hal-05338732

https://hal.science/hal-05338732v1

Submitted on 31 Oct 2025

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# The SCM instrument for the ESA Plasma Observatory mission

Olivier Le Contel<fnref n="1" />, Matthieu Kretzschmar<fnref n="2" />, Alessandro Retino<fnref n="1" />, Fatima Mehrez<fnref n="1" />, Guillaume Jannet<fnref n="2" />, Dominique Alison<fnref n="1" />, Claire Revillet<fnref n="2" />, Laurent Mirioni<fnref n="1" />, Clémence Agrapart<fnref n="2" />, Gérard Sou<fnref n="3" />, Nicolas Geyskens<fnref n="4" />, Christophe Berthod<fnref n="4" />, Thomas Chust<fnref n="1" />, Matthieu Berthomier<fnref n="1" />, Cécile Fiachetti<fnref n="5" />, Yuri Khotyaintsev<fnref n="6" />, Vicki Cripps<fnref n="6" />, and Maria federica Marcucci<fnref n="7" />

The proposal of the Plasma Observatory mission was selected for a competitive phase A with two other missions in the framework of the seventh call for medium mission (M7) organized by ESA. The mission selection is planned in 2026 for a launch in 2037. Its main objectives are to unveil how are particles energized in space plasma and which processes dominate energy transport and drive coupling between the different regions of the terrestrial magnetospheric system? The mission consists of seven satellites, a main platform (mothercraft, MSC) and six smaller identical satellites (daughtercraft) evolving along an equatorial elliptical orbit with an apogee ~17 and a perigee ~8 Earth radii. The seven satellites will fly forming two tetradra and allowing simultaneous measurements at both fluid and ion scales. The mission will include three key science regions: dayside (solar wind, bow shock, magnetosheath, magnetopause), nightside transition region (quasidipolar region, transient near-Earth current sheet, field-aligned currents, braking flow region) and the medium magnetotail (near-Earth reconnection region, fast flow formation region). Plasma Observatory mission is the next logical step after the four satellite magnetospheric missions Cluster and MMS. The search-coil magnetometer (SCM), strongly inherited of the SCM designed for the ESA JUICE mission, is only included in the Fields instrument suite of the MSC. SCM will be delivered by LPP and LPC2E and will provide the three components of the magnetic field fluctuations in the [0.1Hz-8kHz] frequency range, after digitization by the Low frequency Receiver (LFR) within the Field and Wave Processor (FWP), relevant for the three Key science regions. It will be mounted on a 6m boom and will allow to reach the following sensitivities [10⁻<fnref n="3" />, 1.5x10⁻<fnref n="6" />, 5x10⁻⁹, 10⁻¹⁰, 5x10⁻¹⁰] nT<fnref n="2" />/Hz at [1, 10, 100, 1000, 8000] Hz. Associated with the electric field instrument (EFI), SCM will allow to fully characterize the wave polarization and estimate the direction of propagation of the wave energy. These measurements are crucial to understand the role of electromagnetic waves in the energy conversion processes, the plasma and energy transport, the acceleration and the heating of the

<footnote n="1">¹Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas UMR 7648, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Université Paris-Saclay, Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France (olivier.lecontel@lpp.polytechnique.fr)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²LPC2E, UMR7328, CNRS, Université d'Orléans, CNES, Orléans, France</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³GEEPS, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris-Saclay, Centrale-Supélec, Paris, France</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴DT-INSU, CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵CNES, France</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome, Italy</footnote>
plasma.