Joint ESA-China SMILE Mission Set for Launch to Study Earth's Magnetic Shield

Joint ESA-China SMILE mission set for launch to study Earth's magnetic shield

Joint ESA-China SMILE mission set for launch to study Earth's magnetic shield A pioneering joint ESA-China science mission to study Earth’s magnetosphere is set to launch May 19, after a decade of preparations.

Chinese-European mission to reveal shape of Earth’s magnetic shield

SMILE orbiter will use x-rays to map how the solar wind batters the magnetosphere

A joint European-Chinese magnetosphere mission launches in 2026 — the same year Brussels closes most of its €93.5 billion Horizon Europe programme to Chinese institutions, and the carve-out reveals which knowledge Europe still classifies as 'merely curiou

At Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, a Vega-C rocket is being prepared for flight VV29. Its passenger is Smile, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, a spacecraft built through one of the most visible remaining science partnerships between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Smile is not a communications satellite, a military sensor, or a commercial platform. It is a heliophysics mission designed to…

Preparing Smile for space

00:04:42 Before Smile can begin studying how Earth responds to the streams of particles and bursts of radiation from the Sun, the spacecraft had to complete an extraordinary journey here on Earth.Follow the mission through its final launch preparations at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, from fuelling and encapsulation inside its protective fairing, to meeting the rest of the Vega-C rocket that will take it to space.Smile is flying to sp…

University of Calgary - UCalgary scientists provide ground support for SMILE space mission

Scientists from the University of Calgary are playing an important role in the next big mission to study the space environment.The SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) mission. . .