The ESA Vigil Mission at L5: Operational and Scientific Space Weather Opportunities from a New Perspective

The Vigil mission will be ESAs first operational space-weather mission positioned at the Sun–Earth L5 Lagrange point. From this unique vantage point, Vigil will continuously monitor solar activity and observe regions that will rotate into the Sun–Earth line several days later. This perspective significantly enhances near–real-time space-weather nowcasting and forecasting while also enabling long-term scientific investigations. This presentation will provide an overview of the mission’s objectives, implementation status, payload, and planned data products.

Vigil’s remote-sensing payload includes the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR; NOAA, NRL, NASA) and Heliospheric Imager (HI) for tracking the formation, evolution, and propagation of coronal mass ejections (CMEs); the Photospheric Magnetic Field Imager (PMI) for magnetic-field mapping and solar-wind modelling and forecasting; and the NASA-contributed EUV Imager (JEDI), which will provide full-disk and extended-coronal observations in multiple EUV passbands out to 6 solar radii. These are complemented by in-situ measurements from the magnetometer (MAG) and plasma analyser (PLA), together delivering a consistent, calibrated, and openly accessible dataset for both operational and scientific users.

Vigil will provide science-quality data at low latency, supporting real-time operational forecasting as well as long-term research. All data products will be fully integrated into the ESA Space Weather Service Network, ensuring broad accessibility, continuity, and interoperability across the space-weather community. Vigil’s deployment represents a major step forward in global space-weather monitoring capabilities, offering high-quality observations from a strategically critical location for the first time.

In this presentation, I will introduce the Vigil mission, the payload, and mission status, highlight how the space-weather and solar-physics communities can make full use of Vigil’s capabilities, and outline opportunities for international collaboration aimed at maximising the mission’s scientific and operational impact.