Countdown started for Smile.
Everything is ready for the launch of the scientific satellite, the result of collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which will depart on Thursday, April 9 from the Kourou base in French Guiana, with the VV29 mission of the Vega C launcher, produced by Avio in Italy.
Smile will provide humanity with the first complete view of how the Earth reacts to particle flows and bursts of radiation coming from the Sun. By analyzing the Earth’s response to the solar wind, the European-Chinese mission will improve our understanding of solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and space weather science. The European Space Agency has invested 130 million euros in the mission, which represents an unprecedented scientific collaboration between China and Europe and aims to study the interactions between solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.
All the details.
SMILE READY FOR LAUNCH
“Today the launcher is integrated up to the fourth stage, all synthesis checks have been completed, and we are awaiting the final phase of launcher integration,” explained Stefano Bianchi, head of ESA’s flight programs, at the mission presentation press conference. “Next week the satellite loading will take place.”
SATELLITE CHARACTERISTICS
Smile is the acronym for Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer. The satellite weighs 2,250 kg and is based on a Chinese platform built in Shanghai by Microsat, the CAS academy for microsatellite innovation. The module housing the scientific payloads, on the other hand, was produced by Airbus under contract from ESA.
ESA is responsible for providing Smile’s payload module (which hosts three of the four scientific instruments), one of the four scientific instruments on the satellite (the soft X-ray imager, SXI), the launcher, and the structures and services for assembly, integration, and testing. It also contributes to the provision of a second scientific instrument (the ultraviolet imager, UVI) and to mission operations once Smile is in orbit.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences provides the other three scientific instruments and the satellite platform, and is responsible for managing the satellite in orbit.
SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIVES
Therefore, Smile will use four scientific instruments to study how the Earth reacts to the solar wind. In this way, Smile will improve our understanding of solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and space weather science.
As ESA researcher Domenico Trotta explained, the “two protagonists of Smile are the Sun and the Earth,” and with this mission we will have a “global view of our magnetic shield; the goal is to understand the Earth’s response to solar storms.”
SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION WITH CHINA
“We had already had some collaborations with China, but this is the first mission literally half Chinese and half European, with a true integration between the two contributions,” highlighted Massimo Falcolini, head of Product Assurance for Smile at ESA.
Regarding the collaboration with Beijing, Falcolini noted that “working for the first time with China in such an integrated way” represented “at the beginning one of the main challenges of Smile.” Specifically, “It indeed required extensive planning years in advance. We established many details that are normally not set so early.” “Dialogue and planning challenges that we have, however, largely overcome,” concluded the ESA researcher.
