ESA selects Airbus to build its space weather satellite

The space weather forecasting satellite will give extra warning to Earth about incoming solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which can potentially disrupt satellites in orbit and electronic and power distribution systems on Earth.

Vigil, the first operational mission in ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Space Safety Programme (S2P), will be positioned at Lagrange point L5 on the same orbit as the Earth, 150 million km behind it as the Earth orbits the Sun.

This vantage point will enable Vigil to see the Sun as it rotates, and see the size and speed of solar weather heading towards the Earth. ESA said that data from Vigil could provide notice of four to five days of solar winds streaming toward Earth.

Among the most potentially damaging events are coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun, consisting of a magnetised plasma containing protons, electrons and other charged particles. In 1989, a major geomagnetic storm struck Earth and caused a nine-hour outage of electricity transmission across Quebec.