Artist’s impression of the SMILE spacecraft

A satellite designed to investigate solar wind completed all its development work in China on September 27, marking a new milestone of the China-Europe space mission.

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a joint mission between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) that aims to deepen the understanding of the Sun-Earth connection by observing the dynamic interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The SMILE satellite has completed the development work in China, including satellite testing, system interface testing and environmental experiments, according to CAS’s National Space Science Center.

The satellite platform and payload module are expected to arrive at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands in October, where they will be integrated and tested. The payload module has been developed by the ESA.

Science with SMILE [IMAGE: ESA/ATG MEDIALAB]

The SMILE is scheduled for launch by the end of 2025 from Europe’s space launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, by Arianespace’s Vega-C launch vehicle.

The project is China’s first comprehensive and in-depth cooperation with the ESA at the mission level in the field of space science exploration.

Its scientific objectives are to explore the large-scale structures and fundamental patterns of solar wind-magnetosphere interactions, to understand the overall changes and periodic variations of magnetospheric substorms, and to investigate the initiation and development of magnetic storms driven by coronal mass ejections.

Source: Xinhua