{"id":434387,"date":"2026-05-19T03:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434387\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T03:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T03:27:13","slug":"watch-a-spacecraft-is-launching-to-study-how-earth-survives-solar-storms-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/434387\/","title":{"rendered":"WATCH: A Spacecraft Is Launching to Study How Earth Survives Solar Storms : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is set to blast off Tuesday to investigate what happens when extreme winds and giant explosions of plasma shot out from the Sun slam into Earth’s magnetic shield.<\/p>\n

Particularly fierce solar storms<\/a> can knock out satellites, threaten astronauts \u2013 and create colorful auroras in the skies of northern and southern latitudes.<\/p>\n

To find out more about this little-understood space weather, the van-sized SMILE spacecraft is tasked with making the first-ever X-ray observations of Earth’s magnetic field.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch on a Vega-C rocket at 03:52 GMT on Tuesday from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

Lift-off was originally planned for April 9, but was postponed due to a technical issue.<\/p>\n

SMILE \u2013 or the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer \u2013 is a joint mission between the European Space Agency<\/a> (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“What we want to study with SMILE is the relationship between the Earth and the Sun,” explained<\/a> Philippe Escoubet, an ESA scientist working on the project.<\/p>\n

\"ESAVega-C will launch SMILE into space. (European Space Agency<\/a>)Here comes the Sun<\/p>\n

Solar wind is a stream of charged particles shot out from the Sun. Sometimes this wind is kicked up into a huge storm by massive eruptions of plasma called coronal mass ejections.<\/p>\n

Hurtling at around two million kilometers (1.2 million miles) an hour, these powerful blasts take a day or two to reach Earth.<\/p>\n

When they arrive, Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield, deflecting most of the charged particles.<\/p>\n

However, during particularly intense events, some particles can penetrate our atmosphere, where they have the potential to take out power grids or communication networks.<\/p>\n

They also create dazzling auroras known as the northern or southern lights.<\/p>\n

\"AAn aurora seen in Norway. (Johannes Groll\/Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n

During the worst geomagnetic storm<\/a> on record in 1859, bright auroras were seen as far south as Panama \u2013 and telegraph operators around the world were given electric shocks.<\/p>\n

Solar winds can now also pose a danger to satellites orbiting Earth, as well as astronauts sheltering inside space stations.<\/p>\n

Given these threats, scientists want to learn more about space weather, so the world can better forecast and prepare for big blasts in the future.<\/p>\n

To help with this endeavor, the SMILE mission plans to detect the X-rays emitted when charged particles from the Sun interact with the neutral particles of Earth’s upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>Poles apart<\/p>\n

The spacecraft will observe this phenomenon from several important locations, including the magnetopause \u2013 where the magnetic shield deflects solar particles.<\/p>\n

It will also soar above the Earth’s poles, where X-ray photons are visible, according to Dimitra Koutroumpa of France’s CNRS institute, who is working on the mission.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the spacecraft will be placed 700 kilometers above Earth before heading on an extremely elliptical orbit.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

SMILE will be at an altitude of 5,000 kilometers when it flies over the South Pole, where it will transmit data to a research station in Antarctica called Bernardo O’Higgins.<\/p>\n

But the spacecraft will be 121,000 kilometers above Earth when it swings over the North Pole, to take in a far wider view over a longer period of time.<\/p>\n

Among other things, this will allow the mission to “observe the northern lights non-stop for 45 hours at a time for the first time ever”, according<\/a> to the ESA.<\/p>\n

\"ESAChapter 3 of the ‘Inspector Smile’ comic strip shows the European-Chinese Smile mission arriving at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, after two weeks at sea. (European Space Agency<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The spacecraft has four scientific instruments, including a UK-built X-ray imager, as well as a UV imager, ion analyzer, and magnetometer, all made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n

Related: Astronomers Just Set a Record Watching The Sun’s Most Violent Region<\/a><\/p>\n

SMILE is expected to start collecting data just an hour after it is put into orbit.<\/p>\n

The mission is designed to run for three years, but could be extended if all goes well.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A joint European-Chinese spacecraft is set to blast off Tuesday to investigate what happens when extreme winds and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-434387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}