Solar energetic particle instrument SP@M for ESA M7 mission candidate M-MATISSE

M-MATISSE is one of the three mission candidates for the ESA M7 science mission call, all currently passing the Phase A with selection of the mission expected in the middle of 2026 and a possible launch at 2037. The M-MATISSE proposal involves two spacecraft (Henri and Marguerite) with almost identical scientific payload to investigate the Mars plasma environment from two vantage points on different elliptical orbits simultaneously. The main goal of M-MATISSE is, for the first time at Mars in its complexity, to explore, characterize and ultimately understand the global dynamic response of the near-Mars plasma environment to solar wind dynamics, solar energetic events and flares. In the scope of the mission is to study the dynamics induced at Mars’ environment during quiet and extreme solar wind conditions, i.e. space weather effects on the system, including the crucial lower layers of the ionosphere connecting the Mars surface and space, so far only infrequently sampled by existing missions. Also, M-MATISSE would provide essential data to enable forecasting of potential global hazard situations in robotic and human exploration of Mars. The proposed M-MATISSE configuration involves six scientific instruments on both spacecraft, two of them being actually consortia of several scientific sensors with common data processing units.

The Solar Particle at Mars (SP@M) experiment is a part of the Mars Ensemble of Particle Instruments (M-EPI) suite of three particle sensors. SP@M will study distributions of 30 keV to 1 MeV electrons and 30 keV to 10 MeV ions with 4 electron and 4 ion telescopes per spacecraft aiming to monitor parallel/antiparallel/ perpendicular to interplanetary magnetic field fluxes of energetic particles. In this contribution we focus on the description of the SP@M design as achieved in the middle of the Phase A, ongoing development activities incl. digital signal processing and electron-ion discrimination, and performance simulations. The scientific tasks of SP@M will be presented as well.