Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer Spacecraft
The SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) mission is a joint space science mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), aiming to understand the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere in a global manner. The mission was adopted by CAS in November 2016 and by ESA in March 2019 with a target launch in 2025. The SMILE mission successfully passed the join mission Preliminary Design Review in 2020 and the joint spacecraft and mission Critical Design Review in June 2023. The SMILE spacecraft Flight Model is now in the final stage of Assembly, Integration and Test campaign which will be carried out at ESTEC in September 2024. It will then be shipped to the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana for launch. This paper summarizes the SMILE mission development, design and status as of June 2024.
Authors
- Jingjing Tong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1819-1389)
- S. Sembay
- Xiaoxin Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7938-6924)
- Lei Dai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5122-3066)
- Lei Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6794-8459)
- Chris Runciman
- D. Agnolon
- Huawang Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9190-5184)
- Walfried Raab
- Tianran Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3042-247X)
- Xingjian Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2700-7742)
- Jing Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7960-176X)
- Wei Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5090-9915)
- Xiaofeng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-3904-3832)
- Jianhua Zheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5744-6546)
- Jindong Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7040-9299)
- Fei He (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0542-2686)
- Yongmei Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6207-9381)
- Lin Kong
- Javier Sanchez de Palma
- Sergio Moreno
- Benjamin Vanoutryve
- Sylvain Vey
Institutions
- China Meteorological Administration (CN)
- University of Leicester (GB)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Shanghai Micro Satellite Engineering Center (CN)
- National Space Science Center (CN)
- Institute of Geology and Geophysics (CN)
- Airbus (Spain) (ES)
- Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of Chinese Academy of Sciences
- European Space Research and Technology Centre (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Space Science Reviews
- Published
- 2024-12-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-024-01125-7
- Citations
- 7
- Primary Topic
- Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.32