The HEliospheric pioNeer for sOlar and interplanetary threats defeNce (HENON) mission

The HEliospheric pioNeer for sOlar and interplanetary threats defeNce (HENON) is a new mission concept conceived to address the widely recognized need to make a leap forward in the Space Weather (SWE) forecasting and science. The HENON baseline foresees one 12U CubeSat orbiting along a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) of the Sun-Earth system, so that the HENON CubeSat will stay for a long period of time very far upstream of the Earth (well beyond L1 at least ~ 0.1 AU). HENON will embark a state of the art radiation monitor, which will provide high-resolution measurements of energetic particle spectra, making HENON the first mission ever providing a real time monitoring of the particle radiation environment in the deep space. This will enable the insight into the near-Earth spatial variations of SEP events giving rise to better boundary conditions for forecasting and nowcasting tools. The HENON mission also aims to embark payloads tailored for SWE observations, in order to pave the way for a significant improvement (several hours) of the forecasting horizons of geo-effective interplanetary structures (ICMEs, HSSs). HENON has important technological objectives including demonstration of the capability of the CubeSat technologies in deep space to reach both scientific and operational goals through the first ever operation in unexplored DRO orbits, thus paving the way for a future fleet of such CubeSats equally spaced along the DRO, which could provide continuous near real-time measurements for space weather forecasting. HENON is in the A/B study phase that is being developed in the framework of the ESA General Support Technology Program (GSTP). HENON is funded by the Italian Space Agency as part of the ALCOR programme.