Science, Discovery, Tech and Environment · 22 May 2026
European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Launch SMILE Mission
Exam-focused facts from the 22 May 2026 current affairs briefing.
Key facts
- The European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) jointly launched the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission.
- The SMILE spacecraft was launched using a Vega C rocket from Kourou, French Guiana.
- The mission is designed to study the interaction between Earth's magnetosphere and solar storms to predict space weather over a planned duration of three years.
- The spacecraft is equipped with four scientific instruments: a magnetometer, an in-situ ion analyzer, an ultraviolet (UVI) imager, and a soft X-ray (SXI) imager developed by Leicester University.
- SMILE will operate in a highly elliptical orbit and downlink data to the German Aerospace Center (DLR) O’Higgins Antarctic ground station.