UK plays leading role as landmark mission launches to unlock secrets of Earth’s magnetic shield

• SMILE launches to provide first complete picture of how Earth's magnetic field responds to the solar wind, improving predictions of solar storms that disrupt GPS, communications and power grids. 

• UK Space Agency has provided £15 million for the mission, with Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL leading the science and the University of Leicester developing the first instrument to observe Earth's magnetic field in X-rays. 

• The UK is a leading partner in the mission, with British companies building critical mission hardware and software that will strengthen space weather forecasting and protect vital infrastructure.

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) — a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) — lifted off aboard a Vega-C rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on Tuesday 19 May. 

Now in orbit, SMILE will provide scientists with the first complete picture of how Earth's magnetic field responds to the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun. 

When the solar wind intensifies into solar storms, the effects are felt here on Earth. GPS systems can fail, shortwave radio communications can be knocked out, and in the most extreme cases, power grids can be overwhelmed.  

The potential economic impact on the UK was estimated at around £9 billion in the Met Office's 2022 risk assessment. The more we understand about how and why these storms occur, the better placed we are to protect the infrastructure that modern life depends on — from the satellites guiding aircraft and emergency services, to the energy networks keeping homes warm. 

SMILE will give scientists the tools to build more accurate space weather forecasts, helping to reduce the worst effects of solar storms before they strike.  This mission backs the government's Plan for Change by strengthening UK resilience against space-weather disruption, while supporting high-skill jobs and exportable technology through world-leading British science and industry.

The UK at the heart of the mission

The UK Space Agency has provided £15 million funding for UK involvement in SMILE, supporting a significant British contribution to the mission's science and technology. British researchers are leading the mission's science at the highest level. Dr Colin Forsyth of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL-MSSL) serves as Co-Principal Investigator for the overall mission. 

UK scientists are also leading one of SMILE's four science instruments — the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI). SMILE is the first space telescope to look at Earth's magnetic field in X-rays, allowing scientists to uncover for the first time exactly where and how the solar wind interacts with our planet's magnetic shield. 

Dr Steven Sembay of the University of Leicester leads the European consortium responsible for building the SXI, which uses innovative ‘lobster-eye' micropore optics technology developed at Leicester. SXI is the first instrument to be delivered using facilities at the University's Space Park Leicester. 

While extreme space weather events are rare, the UK is better prepared than ever before - backed by world-class monitoring from the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre, one of only a handful of 24/7 centres of its kind globally, and a £300 million stake in Vigil, an ESA satellite mission that will deliver faster and more accurate space weather warnings. 

The UK SMILE team has already begun working with the Met Office to explore how SMILE data could strengthen forecasting capabilities, helping to reduce the worst effects of solar storms on the ground and in orbit.

Space Minister Liz Lloyd said:

SMILE is an excellent example of what British science and industry can achieve on the world stage. From the brilliant researchers leading the mission's science to the precision engineering of companies building the spacecraft's instruments, the UK is central to this mission.

Understanding how our planet's magnetic shield protects us from the Sun isn't just fascinating science — it has real consequences for how we safeguard our satellites, our infrastructure and our astronauts. I'm proud that the UK is helping to answer some of the biggest questions in space science, and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers in the process.

Dr Colin Forsyth, Co-Principal Investigator, Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL, said:

Previous missions have been able to detect the edge of our magnetic field as they pass through it, providing single point measurements. But we can only tell the size and shape of the field by averaging these positions under different conditions - we've never been able to image its boundary before.

With SMILE, we will be able to see how our magnetic bubble changes its shape, whether it does this smoothly or in steps, and how it gets squeezed down as eruptions from the Sun pass Earth. We've never done anything like this before. We have lots of models and theoretical frameworks but now we get to see what's going on.

Dr Steven Sembay, Principal Investigator, University of Leicester, said:

It has been an honour to lead the development of the Soft X-ray Imager and work with an incredibly talented and motivated team.  Now we will soon move from the engineering challenges of delivering the hardware to the data analysis challenges of providing the scientific community with the data products that should be transformative in the study of the Sun-Earth interaction. Exciting times ahead!

British industry delivering cutting-edge technology and support

UK companies have made vital hardware and software contributions to the mission. 

Teledyne e2v, based in Chelmsford, supplied the SXI's Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors — the largest ever flown for X-ray detection — under an approximately £1.5 million contract with ESA. Work with the Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI) at the Open University on the CCD development programme improved the space radiation hardness of the detectors, maintaining a key UK technology capability with strong commercial and export potential. 

Photek Ltd has been contracted to assemble the detector system for the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI) instrument. The UVI will make SMILE the first mission since 2008 to observe the auroras globally in ultraviolet light, and the first ever to record the northern lights continuously for up to 45 hours at a time — giving scientists an unprecedented view of how Earth responds to the solar wind. 

Axon' Cable provides high-performance wiring using its MicroMach connectors and Low Mass SpaceWire cables to enable data rates up to 3 GB/s. This ESA-qualified interconnect solution significantly reduces mass and crosstalk, ensuring reliable data transmission between scientific instruments in the mission's harsh orbital environment. 

The CGI team in Bristol developed the application software for the instrument payloads.  This real-time embedded system controls all four of the platform's instruments, managing the flow of science data, instrument health and enabling automated payload operations through the deployment of On-Board Macro Procedures.   

The SXI Instrument underwent launch and space environment testing in the advanced test facilities operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council's RAL Space.   

Alongside its scientific discoveries, SMILE will deliver real-world benefits by helping to improve space weather forecasting. Severe space weather events — where solar storms disturb Earth's magnetic environment — can disrupt satellites, knock out communications systems and damage power infrastructure. SMILE will address three of the most pressing open questions in space science: what happens where the solar wind meets Earth's magnetic shield; what causes magnetic disturbances on the night side of Earth; and how we can better predict the most dangerous solar storms.