Launch of satellite to study Earth’s magnetic shield hailed by lead scientists as result of ‘true 50/50 collaboration’
3-MIN READ3-MINHolly ChikPublished: 9:00pm, 20 May 2026China and Europe on Tuesday launched their first jointly developed satellite, a space mission that will explore the precise mechanism of the Earth’s defence against solar wind.
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’s magnetic environment.
“The 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,” ESA’s director of science, Carole Mundell, said in an agency press release.
“It is exciting to see this all come together today and I am looking forward to the new scientific discoveries SMILE will deliver,” she added.
“It builds on groundbreaking scientific and technological heritage from previous missions … taking tried-and-tested technologies and applying them in a new way to reveal Earth’s magnetic environment like never before.”
