ESA Vigil
ESA Vigil, formerly known as Lagrange, is a planned solar weather mission by the European Space Agency. It envisions two spacecraft to be positioned at Lagrangian points L and L. Monitoring space weather includes events such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, geomagnetic storms, solar proton events, etc. Monitoring would help predict arrival times at the Earth and any potential effect on infrastructure. The "Vigil" spacecraft are anticipated to launch in the mid 2020s. On 17 May 2021, ESA began soliciting design concept studies from various European industrial and scientific consortiums for the mission. A final design will  be selected after approximately 18 months, in late 2022. Simultaneously, the ESA announced the No-Name Mission contest to replace the placeholder "Lagrange" name. The winning name, "Vigil", was announced on 10 February 2022. Overview. To ensure an effective capability to monitor potentially dangerous solar events, ESA initiated a study of two potential future space weather satellites called "Lagrange". The "Lagrange" mission concept is overseen by the Space Situational Awareness Programme at ESA. On 2 February 2018, ESA signed technological contracts (Phase A) to be led by Airbus UK and OHB SE of Germany to design the spacecraft specifications and  the instruments' integration process. UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Mullard Space Science Laboratory will assess the requirements of the science payload. This mission concept proposes positioning two spacecraft in orbit at the L1 and L5 Lagrangian points, respectively, where gravitational forces interact to create a stable location to save propellant and from which to make observations. L1 is in the solar wind 'upstream' from Earth, so measurements at L1 provide information about the space weather coming toward Earth. In contrast, the L5 point provides a way to monitor coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the 'side' in order to estimate  their speed and direction. Objectives. The preliminary mission objectives are: Payload. To achieve these objectives, the satellites at the L1 and L5 positions have to carry different types of remote-sensing and "in-situ" instruments. The suggested optical instruments take heritage from ESA and NASA science missions like SOHO, STEREO and Solar Orbiter, but the instruments would be optimized for operational space weather monitoring. The notional science payload may require: