Europe & China Join Hand For Space-rocket Mission

Amidst the superpower rivalry among countries around the world, Scientists at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC and visiting Chinese counterparts conduct a series of spacecraft-rocket integration tests for a joint mission, according to a media report on Sunday.

The joint mission namely, the Solar Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission include, the docking, satellite separation and impact tests with a prototype of the SMILE satellite developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the CAS (IAMCAS) and the payload adapter for the mission’s Vega-C rocket at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), CAS.

It is the first time a Chinese team will conduct a test at ESA facilities.

According to reports, last year a structural thermal model, a  payload module to Shanghai for integration with the IAMCAS platform and qualification of the satellite was sent by Airbus.

Meanwhile, CAS’s National Space Science Centre (NSSC) has also notified the slated launch of SMILE in April 2025, following a number of delays to the project. It is a Sino-European joint mission.

The three-year mission will be operated in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, taking a third of the way to the Moon at apogee. The mission further studies the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere and knock-on effects in the ionosphere, as well as phenomena such as coronal mass ejections.

Following the number of technical hindrances and programmatic evolutions, among which a significant impact due to Covid, the development faced a one-year delay.

Following a number of technical difficulties, and programmatic evolutions, Covid-19 has a significant disruption among all leading to a year’s delay, the mission now seems on track for 2025 and the same will be confirmed at the Critical Design Review foreseen in mid-2023.

However, exchanges between China and ESA with a view to sending European astronauts to China’s Tiangong space station later this decade is stalled, according to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.