China and Europe team up on prototype satellite test before joint SMILE space mission in 2025
- It marks first time a satellite made in China is shipped to European Space Agency, and for a Chinese team to help assemble and test at an ESA facility
- SMILE is expected to launch atop a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s spaceport in South America, around April 2025
The solar wind magnetosphere ionosphere link explorer, or SMILE, has been designed and developed jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2015 to create the most powerful tool for studying the Earth’s magnetic environment.
This month, a Chinese team travelled to Noordwijk in the Netherlands to work with colleagues at the European Space Research and Technology Centre under the ESA.
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China’s Shenzhou 15 astronaut crew complete their first spacewalk
They tested whether a prototype satellite of the mission – whose parts, including one from Europe, were assembled at the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites in Shanghai and shipped to Europe – could dock with and separate from the European launcher as designed.
The tests were deemed successful, and “excellent collaboration was established” between the Chinese and European teams and the rocket company Arianespace, according to Italian astronomer Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, the mission’s co-principal investigator from University College London.
It marked the first time a satellite made in China was shipped to the ESA, and for a Chinese team to help assemble and test a satellite at an ESA facility.
Numerous spacecraft have observed the sun and its effects on the Earth’s magnetosphere, which acts as a protective shield for life on Earth against the supersonic solar winds and cosmic radiation.