SMESE: a combined UV-IR-X-gamma solar mission

SMESE (SMall Explorer For the study of Solar Eruptions) is a Franco-Chinese microsatellite mission. The scientific objectives of SMESE are the study of coronal mass ejections and flares. Its payload consists of three instrument packages : LYOT, DESIR and HEBS. LYOT is composed of a Lyman α (121.6 nm) coronagraph, a Lyman α disk imager and a far UV disk imager. DESIR is an infrared telescope working at 35 μm and 150 μm. HEBS is a high energy burst spectrometer working in X rays and γ rays covering the 10 keV to 600 MeV range. SMESE will be launched around 2011, providing a unique opportunity of detecting and understanding eruptions at the maximum activity phase of the solar cycle in a wide range of energies. The instrumentation on board SMESE is described in this paper.