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KOUROU, French Guiana, March 2026 – The joint mission management team of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) confirmed today that all pre-launch activities have been completed at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The spacecraft, representing a landmark collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA), is now integrated onto Vega-C "vampire" payload launch adapter to connect the satellite to the launch vehicle. Liftoff is scheduled for April 9, 2026, local time, marking the mission’s entry into the final launch countdown.

The launch campaign commenced following the successful Joint Qualification and Flight Acceptance Review (JQFAR) on October 28, 2025. Critical hardware was subsequently transported to the Guiana Space Center across the globe: the satellite’s propellant shipped from Shanghai in late November 2025, arriving at Kourou in early February, while the satellite flight model and its test equipment departed from ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) on February 11, 2026. Transported via the cargo vessel Colibri, the equipment arrived in French Guiana on February 26 and was transferred to the launch complex.

At the spaceport, the CAS-ESA joint test team conducted an intensive verification campaign, confirming all satellite systems are operating within specification and are stable. The physical and functional mating of the satellite to the payload launch adapter, has been completed, fulfilling all preparatory milestones.

With the launch window confirmed, the joint team is now conducting final checks on launch site weather and the integrated vehicle status to ensure readiness for a successful launch.

The SMILE mission is a historic endeavor, being China’s first comprehensive, mission-level space science partnership with ESA. It is also the concluding project of the CAS Strategic Priority Program on Space Science (Phase II). The satellite will pioneer the use of a wide-field soft X-ray imager to achieve the first-ever global imaging of Earth’s magnetospheric boundaries, promising transformative insights into solar-terrestrial interactions and potential breakthroughs in space weather science.

Fig. 1 SMILE was being loaded onto a ship at a wharf in Amsterdam

Fig. 2 The transport vessel Colibri was sailing along the Kourou River crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Fig. 3 The satellite shipping container was being transported from a wharf in Kourou to the launch site

Fig. 4 The satellite alignment test was conducted at the launch site

Fig. 5 The satellite was being fueled

Images credit: European Space Agency (ESA)