The joint mission management team for the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) today confirmed the completion of all pre-launch activities at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

This landmark spacecraft, a collaborative effort between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA), is now fully integrated with its Vega-C "vampire" payload launch adapter.

Liftoff is scheduled for April 9, 2026, local time, marking the commencement of the mission’s final launch countdown.

The comprehensive launch campaign began following the Joint Qualification and Flight Acceptance Review (JQFAR) on October 28, 2025. Critical hardware was subsequently transported to the Guiana Space Center: 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, and arrived in French Guiana on February 26.

Upon arrival at the spaceport, a joint CAS-ESA test team conducted an intensive verification campaign. This confirmed that all satellite systems are operating within specification and are stable. The physical and functional mating of the satellite to its payload launch adapter has also been completed, fulfilling all preparatory milestones.

With the launch window confirmed, the joint team is now conducting final assessments of launch site weather and the integrated vehicle’s status to ensure full readiness for a successful mission.

The SMILE mission is a historic endeavor, representing China’s first comprehensive, mission-level space science partnership with ESA. It also marks the culmination of the CAS Strategic Priority Program on Space Science (Phase II).

Equipped with a wide-field soft X-ray imager, the satellite aims 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.

SMILE was being loaded onto a ship at a wharf in Amsterdam (Credit to ESA)

The transport vessel Colibri was sailing along the Kourou River crossing the Atlantic Ocean (Credit to ESA)

The satellite shipping container was being transported from a wharf in Kourou to the launch site (Credit to ESA)

The CAS-ESA joint team conducting satellite alignment test at the launch site (Credit to ESA)

SMILE satellite was undergoing fueling operations. (Credit to ESA)