An Electron Plasma Camera for the Plasma Observatory ESA mission

Measuring both the energy spectrum and the 3D distribution of charged particles at high temporal resolution is one of the main challenges in space plasma instrumentation. The conventional solution to date has been to use multiple sensors that couple the native quasi-2D instantaneous field of view of the electrostatic top-hat analyser with a scanning electrostatic deflection system.

For the Plasma Observatory ESA mission, we proposed an alternate strategy that reduces the level of resources required for rapid plasma measurements at sub-ion scale in the magnetospheric environment. The Electron Plasma Camera (EPC) is based on the donut-shaped electrostatic analyser topology that do not require any electrostatic scanning to provide a hemispheric field-of-view of the surrounding plasma.

This optics is manufactured through the selective metallization of a high-resolution 3D printed polymer. It is coupled to a 256-pixel imaging detection system that uses the detection technology that was demonstrated on the Solar Orbiter mission.  EPC’s fully integrated front-end electronics takes advantage of the high-geometric factor of its electrostatic optics to enable the capture of high temporal resolution images of electron phase space. We present the expected capability of the instrument in the key science regions the Plasma Observatory mission will encounter, and some of the major science questions related to multi-scale phenomena the Plasma Observatory mission will address with its unique data set.