30/09/2026
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On 23 September, the European-Chinese Smile mission was declared ready to start revealing how Earth responds to the wind of charged particles from the Sun. This follows a busy in-space commissioning period since the spacecraft launched on 19 May and reached its target orbit for science operations on 20 June.
A spacecraft never quite behaves the same in space as it does on the ground. Between 20 June and now, European and Chinese teams have been getting Smile ready – including deploying mechanisms, switching on units, checking all communications between the spacecraft and the ground, and fixing any issues that came up.
“The Smile mission is a testament to the trust built between our teams, their dedication to excellence and their determination to find solutions whatever the challenge,” says Professor Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science. ” Smile is now approved to begin science operations. This is a very important milestone – a true pleasure to announce – and I am sure our excellent collaboration will deliver ground-breaking data to scientists around the world.”
Preparing Smile’s instruments for science
A big part of the commissioning period involved testing out Smile’s toolbox of four science instruments – the soft X-ray imager (SXI), ultraviolet aurora imager (UVI), magnetometer (MAG) and light ion analyser (LIA).
Each instrument will collect vital information to help us better understand solar storms, geomagnetic storms, and the science of space weather. Smile will give us data on how solar activity interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, leads to the auroras and can affect electronic infrastructure on and around Earth.
The video below is the first footage to be released from UVI, the first camera since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the North Pole in ultraviolet light. UVI is now recording the auroras for a record-breaking 45 hours at a time.
The footage was taken on 24 July 2026, just two weeks after UVI was switched on. It shows activity in the ring of northern lights due to a disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field caused by a rush of solar wind particles.
Smile’s X-ray camera, SXI, was also successfully switched on and has taken its first images. SXI is a key European contribution to the mission. The two images below – both showing the aftermath of a distant exploded distant star – were taken to check that the camera works as expected.
Though the camera itself is working very well, when pointed towards Earth it currently detects too much unwanted (stray) light. To reduce this unwanted light as much as possible, specific settings and software updates are currently being changed and implemented onboard. ESA, the consortium of universities and companies involved in the instrument, and the Chinese team leading the operations of the spacecraft are working together hard to achieve this goal. It helps that the instrument has a versatile design that can be adjusted remotely.
Because Smile is steadily pointing farther away from Earth and less light is emitted by the North Pole as we are moving towards northern winter, the unwanted light is reducing naturally. It is due to reach a minimum in mid-October. At that point, SXI would take its first good image of the magnetopause (where the solar wind meets Earth’s magnetic field), or the northern polar cusp (a hole in the magnetosphere at the North Pole, where charged solar wind particles get funnelled towards Earth’s surface).
Let’s Smile: the film
Smile went from a handful of disconnected pieces to collecting science data in just over two years.
A new documentary film covers the exciting period in the mission’s development between June 2024 and May 2026. It features behind-the-scenes footage of the different parts of the spacecraft arriving at ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands, being attached together, tested and finally sent to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana for launch.
Featuring exclusive interviews with scientists and engineers from across Europe, it is the final instalment in the series ‘Let’s Smile’, bringing together and supplementing the four shorter episodes released so far.
About Smile
Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Smile is using four science instruments to study how Earth responds to the solar wind from the Sun. In doing so, Smile will improve our understanding of solar storms, geomagnetic storms and the science of space weather.
ESA is responsible for providing Smile’s payload module (which carries three of the four science instruments), one of the spacecraft’s four science instruments (the soft X-ray imager, SXI), the launcher, and the Assembly Integration and Testing facilities and services. ESA contributes to a second science instrument (the ultraviolet imager, UVI) and the mission operations.
CAS provides the other three science instruments and the spacecraft platform, and is overall responsible for operating the spacecraft in orbit.
Smile is part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, principally contributing to answering the question ‘How does the Solar System work?’
For more information, visit: Smile