CSES (China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite) is a multi-instrumental scientific space program whose objectives are to investigate the near-Earth electromagnetic, plasma and particle environment and to study the seismo associated disturbances in the ionosphere-magnetosphere transition zone, the anthropogenic electromagnetic noise as well as the natural non-seismic electromagnetic emissions, mainly due to tropospheric activity. In particular, the mission aims at confirming the existence of possible temporal correlations between the occurrence of medium and strong magnitude earthquakes and the observation in space of electromagnetic perturbations, plasma variations and precipitation of bursts of high-energy charged particles from the inner Van Allen belt.
The first satellite (CSES-01) was launched on 2018, while a second one (CSES-02) is currently under development and its launch is expected by the end of 2022.
As in CSES-01, the suite of instruments on-board CSES-02 will comprise a particle detector (HEPD-02, High-energy Particle Detector) to measure the increase of the electron and proton fluxes due to short-time perturbations of the radiation belts induced by solar, terrestrial or anthropic phenomena in the energy range 3-100 MeV for electrons and 30-200 MeV for protons.
HEPD-02 comprises a tracker made of CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS), a double layer of crossed plastic scintillators for trigger and a calorimeter, made of a tower of plastic scintillators and a matrix of inorganic crystals, surrounded by plastic scintillator planes for containment tagging.
The main characteristics and performance of HEPD-02 are presented, highlighting the architectural choices made to meet the scientific objectives of the mission.