China-Europe SMILE satellite ready for launch

BEIJING, March 26 (Xinhua) — The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE), a satellite jointly developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA), has completed all pre-launch preparations at the space launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, and is scheduled for launch on April 9 local time, according to the CAS on Thursday.

The SMILE satellite mission represents China's first mission-level, all-around in-depth cooperation with the ESA in the field of space science exploration.

The satellite will apply soft X-ray imaging technology to achieve, for the first time, a global view of the large-scale structure of Earth's magnetosphere. It is, notably, expected to yield a series of scientific breakthroughs in areas such as space weather forecasting and fundamental understanding of magnetospheric physics.

The SMILE satellite has been mounted on a Vega-C launch vehicle.

At present, the launch window has been determined, and the joint team is closely monitoring and verifying weather conditions at the launch site, as well as the final technical status of both the rocket and satellite.■