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2h ago

ESA–China SMILE Mission Targets Tuesday Launch To Image Earth’s Magnetic Shield

The collaboration marks the first fully co‑designed ESA–China science mission.

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The SMILE spacecraft is prepared for launch in Kourou, French Guiana
ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are jointly launching Smile in 2026 — the same heliophysics collaboration NASA has been statutorily barred from since the 2011 Wolf Amendment, and the gap reveals how much of 'Western space policy' is actually two incompatible policies
A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is planning to investigate what happens when harsh solar weather crashes in Earth's magnetic field

Overview

  • SMILE, which is scheduled to lift off at 03:52 GMT Tuesday on a Vega C from Kourou, follows an April delay tied to a launcher subsystem issue.
  • From a high, highly elliptical path that peaks near 121,000 kilometers, the spacecraft will capture wide-field soft X-ray and ultraviolet views of the Sun-facing edge of Earth’s magnetic field.
  • The payload pairs a UK-built lobster-eye X-ray camera with Chinese-built ultraviolet, ion, and magnetic field instruments, with data routed through ground stations in Antarctica and Sanya.
  • Mission leaders say SMILE is for discovery science and not real-time alerts, so operators will still lean on aging warning assets like SOHO until NOAA’s SWFO-L1 replacement is in service.
  • The flight spotlights a policy split, as ESA can work bilaterally with China while U.S. law known as the Wolf Amendment restricts NASA from similar cooperation.