The mission of the new Smile satellite, to better understand the interaction between the Earth and the Sun

2024-05-06 16:30:56

The Smile (Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) mission is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Its goal is to help us better understand the interaction between the Sun and the Earth.

Recently, by signing an agreement with Arianespace, ESA has secured the launch of Smile aboard a Vega-C rocket. The launch will be made from the European spaceport in French Guiana and is scheduled for the end of 2025.

Vega-C is the European light rocket designed to launch a wide range of payloads into space. It can carry cargoes of very diverse shapes and sizes, improving Europe’s independent access to space.

Vega-C will place Smile into low Earth orbit, from which the spacecraft will be propelled into high Earth orbit. In this final, egg-shaped orbit, Smile will circle the Earth approximately every two days. It will move about 121,000 kilometers away from the Earth’s surface for a longer look at the northern polar regions, before coming within 5,000 kilometers to download its valuable data archive to ground stations in Antarctica and China.

Such a unique orbit will allow scientists to observe important regions of near-Earth space for more than 40 hours at a time. Smile will capture for the first time in video and X-ray images how the solar wind crashes into Earth’s protective magnetic bubble. Thanks to its complementary ultraviolet images, the longest continuous observation of all those carried out of the northern lights will be obtained.

Artistic recreation of the Smile satellite and its field of study. (Image: © ESA. Work carried out by ATG under contract to ESA.)

Smile is the first space science mission that ESA and China jointly select, design, develop, launch and operate. In addition to launch, ESA is responsible for Smile’s payload module (which houses its scientific instruments), the spacecraft’s test facilities, the main ground station in Antarctica and contributing to scientific operations.

In autumn 2024, the European and Chinese sections of the spacecraft will arrive at ESA’s technical centre, ESTEC. There, the two sections will be assembled and the ship will be tested for the first time as a complete unit. The spacecraft will then be sent from ESTEC to the European spaceport in French Guiana. (Source: ESA)