Mission Highlight: SMILE
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) are targeting tonight, Monday, May 18, at 11:52 p.m. EST for the launch of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) on a Vega-C rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The mission was originally set to fly April 9 but slipped after engineers identified a technical issue with the Vega-C.
We’ve known for 30 years that when charged solar wind particles hit neutral particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere, they emit low-energy, or “soft,” X-rays — a process called solar wind charge exchange, discovered in 1996 by astronomers studying Comet Hyakutake. SMILE will be the first spacecraft to use that emission to image Earth’s magnetosphere — the invisible magnetic shield protecting the planet from the solar wind — and watch how it responds to the Sun’s attack. That job falls to the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), the largest of the four instruments on board. A second remote-sensing camera, the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI), will track geomagnetic storms in the aurora. The other two instruments measure conditions at SMILE’s location as it flies through near-Earth space. The Light Ion Analyser (LIA) counts the solar wind particles passing the spacecraft, so scientists know what kind of solar wind was hitting the magnetosphere when SXI snapped each picture. The Magnetometer (MAG) measures the local magnetic field, telling researchers, moment by moment, whether SMILE was inside or outside the magnetic bubble it’s photographing.
After a 57-minute Vega-C ascent, SMILE will climb under its own power into a highly elliptical orbit reaching 75,186 miles (121,000 kilometers) over the North Pole and dipping to 3,107miles (5,000 km) over the South Pole, where it will downlink data to ground stations. The mission is part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision program, and has a three-year lifetime.
Other missions this week
On Tuesday, May 19, SpaceX returns with the Starlink Group 17-42 mission, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:11 p.m. EST. The Falcon 9 booster will target a landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific.
On Wednesday, May 20, SpaceX is targeting 6:30 p.m. EST for the debut of Starship Version 3 — also designated Flight 12 — from Starbase, Texas. This is the first flight of the redesigned Starship, powered by a new Raptor variant and lifting off from Starbase’s newly built second pad. SpaceX has since confirmed the Super Heavy booster will splash down off the Gulf of Mexico rather than attempt a tower catch, while the upper stage will deploy a payload of 22 Starlinks: 20 mass simulators sized to match the planned V3 generation, plus two flight-ready spacecraft modified to turn around and image Starship’s heat shield.
On Thursday, May 21, SpaceX swings to the east coast for the Starlink Group 10-31 mission, lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:26 a.m. EST. The Falcon 9 booster will target a landing on A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic.
On Friday, May 22, Rocket Lab will launch the “Viva La StriX” mission from Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand at 5:30 a.m. EST. The Electron rocket will carry a single StriX synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite for Japan-based commercial operator Synspective, delivering it to low Earth orbit. This is Rocket Lab’s ninth dedicated launch for Synspective, whose SAR spacecraft can see through cloud cover and darkness to track flood damage, construction progress, and other ground changes that optical imagery would miss. Rocket Lab and Synspective expanded their partnership in September 2025 to a total of 21 dedicated Electron missions through the end of the decade.
On Saturday, May 23, SpaceX returns to Vandenberg for Starlink Group 17-37 at 10:00 a.m. EST. The booster will target a landing on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You.
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) rolled the Long March-2F rocket that will carry the Shenzhou-23 mission to the pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center last week. The agency says they will launch the mission at an “appropriate time” in the near future, with some sources reporting as early as Sunday, May 24. The mission is expected to be a routine crew rotation to the Tiangong space station, though the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has yet to publicly announce the crew or a precise launch time.
Last week’s recap
The week opened on Sunday, May 11, when SpaceX launched the classified NROL-172 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg. The Falcon 9 booster landed on Of Course I Still Love You.
On Tuesday, May 12, CASC launched the SpaceSail Polar Group #8 batch — part of China’s growing broadband megaconstellation — on a Long March 6A from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.
Wednesday, May 13, saw Chinese commercial launch provider Landspace fly a mass-simulator payload on its ZhuQue-2E Block 2 methane-fueled rocket from Jiuquan. CAS Space followed early Friday, May 15, lofting five satellites on its Kinetica 1 solid-fueled rocket from the same complex.
Later on Friday, SpaceX launched the CRS-34 Cargo Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral. The week closed on Sunday, May 17, when CASC launched the SpaceSail Polar Group #9 batch on a Long March 8 from Wenchang.
Looking ahead
On Monday, May 25, SpaceX is set to launch Starlink Group 10-47 from Cape Canaveral at 7:41 a.m. EST. On Tuesday, May 26, CASC will launch an as-yet-unannounced payload on a Long March 7A from Wenchang at 12:00 p.m. EST. SpaceX returns to the pad on Wednesday, May 27, for Starlink Group 17-41 from Vandenberg at 10:00 a.m. EST.
On Friday, May 29, ULA is scheduled to launch the Amazon Leo (LA-07) mission on an Atlas V 551 from Cape Canaveral at 12:27 p.m. EST. This is another batch of Amazon’s Leo broadband internet satellites.
