{"id":458591,"date":"2026-05-20T15:51:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458591\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:51:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:51:29","slug":"smile-in-space-china-eu-joint-planet-defence-satellite-defies-earthly-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458591\/","title":{"rendered":"SMILE in space: China, EU joint planet defence satellite defies earthly tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">China and Europe on Tuesday launched their first jointly developed satellite, a space mission that will explore the precise mechanism of the Earth\u2019s defence against solar wind.<\/p>\n<p>The successful collaboration on the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) comes as Beijing and Brussels are locked in <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/news\/china\/diplomacy\/article\/3353867\/sinking-ship-why-eu-and-china-could-be-heading-trade-war?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">escalating trade and geopolitical tensions<\/a>, largely driven by the European Union\u2019s massive trade deficit with China.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The satellite has been jointly designed and developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA), under a project launched in 2015 to create the most powerful tool for studying the Earth\u2019s magnetic environment.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThe trusted collaboration between our engineering and science teams in Europe and China has endured through global challenges such as pandemic travel restrictions and geographically distributed teams,\u201d ESA\u2019s director of science, Carole Mundell, said in an agency press release.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt is exciting to see this all come together today and I am looking forward to the new scientific discoveries SMILE will deliver,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt builds on groundbreaking scientific and technological heritage from previous missions \u2026 taking tried-and-tested technologies and applying them in a new way to reveal Earth\u2019s magnetic environment like never before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China and Europe on Tuesday launched their first jointly developed satellite, a space mission that will explore the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[576,72,114,113,240,61,60,166,43,387,82,10178,247,850,80,90,386],"class_list":["post-458591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-asia","tag-business","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-hong-kong","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lifestyle","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-science","tag-south-china-morning-post","tag-space","tag-sport","tag-technology","tag-us","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}