The MAG-M magnetometer onboard Plasma Observatory

• DOI: 10.5194/egusphere-egu25-17894
• Publication Date: 2025-03-15T04:54:01Z
• Authors: Lorenzo Matteini; Patrick Brown; Madeleine Tomes; John Hodgkins

Plasma Observatory (PO) is an ESA mission proposal to study for the first time plasma transport and energization in the near-Earth environment simultaneously at both fluid and ion scales, with a constellation of 7 spacecraft: 1 mother and 6 daughters. In the PO mission framework, MAG-M is the proposed fluxgate magnetometer onboard the Mothercraft, to be built at Imperial College London.It is a dual-sensor instrument mounted on a rigid boom dedicated to high-resolution measurements of the DC magnetic field, with strong design heritage from previous missions. In this presentation we review MAG-M main characteristics and its development stage. We also discuss the key role of magnetic field measurements in the goals of the mission and how MAG-M will contribute, both with single-point and multi-point measurements, to the investigation of the nature of waves and structures in the plasma at both fluid and kinetic scales, their vector anisotropies, the 3-dimensional shapes of eddies and boundaries in the plasma as well as to the determination of the flows of energy acting between particles and fields in the near-Earth environment.