Overview

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) and European Space Agency (ESA) collaborative science mission designed to study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere, and the geospace dynamics that result, comprising a fundamental aspect of heliophysics. Primary goals are investigating the dynamic response of the Earth’s magnetosphere to the solar wind impact via simultaneous in situ solar wind/magnetosheath plasma and magnetic field measurements, X-Ray images of the magnetosheath and magnetic cusps, and UV images of global auroral distributions. Imaging of the magnetosphere and auroras for more than 40 hours continuously from a highly elliptical northern orbit.