SMILE: a joint ESA/CAS mission to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere

Walfried Raab; Graziella Branduardi-Raymont; Chi Wang; Lei Dai; Eric Donovan; Greg Enno; Philippe Escoubet; Andrew Holland; Li Jing; Dhiren Kataria; Lei Li; Andy Read; Denis Rebuffat; Jens Romstedt; Chris Runciman; Steve Sembay; Emma Spanswick; Jon Sykes; Julian Thornhill; Arno Wielders; Aibing Zhang; Jianhua Zheng

doi:10.1117/12.2231984

11 July 2016 SMILE: a joint ESA/CAS mission to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere

Walfried Raab, Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, Chi Wang, Lei Dai, Eric Donovan, Greg Enno, Philippe Escoubet, Andrew Holland, Li Jing, Dhiren Kataria, Lei Li, Andy Read, Denis Rebuffat, Jens Romstedt, Chris Runciman, Steve Sembay, Emma Spanswick, Jon Sykes, Julian Thornhill, Arno Wielders, Aibing Zhang, Jianhua Zheng

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9905, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray; 990502 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2231984
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Abstract

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a collaborative science mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). SMILE is a novel self-standing mission to observe the coupling of the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere via X-Ray imaging of the solar wind -- magnetosphere interaction zones, UV imaging of global auroral distributions and simultaneous in-situ solar wind, magnetosheath plasma and magnetic field measurements. The SMILE mission proposal was submitted by a consortium of European, Chinese and Canadian scientists following a joint call for mission by ESA and CAS. It was formally selected by ESA's Science Programme Committee (SPC) as an element of the ESA Science Program in November 2015, with the goal of a launch at the end of 2021.

In order to achieve its scientific objectives, the SMILE payload will comprise four instruments: the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), which will spectrally map the Earth's magnetopause, magnetosheath and magnetospheric cusps; the UltraViolet Imager (UVI), dedicated to imaging the auroral regions; the Light Ion Analyser (LIA) and the MAGnetometer (MAG), which will establish the solar wind properties simultaneously with the imaging instruments. We report on the status of the mission and payload developments and the findings of a design study carried out in parallel at the concurrent design facilities (CDF) of ESA and CAS in October/November 2015.

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Walfried Raab, Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, Chi Wang, Lei Dai, Eric Donovan, Greg Enno, Philippe Escoubet, Andrew Holland, Li Jing, Dhiren Kataria, Lei Li, Andy Read, Denis Rebuffat, Jens Romstedt, Chris Runciman, Steve Sembay, Emma Spanswick, Jon Sykes, Julian Thornhill, Arno Wielders, Aibing Zhang, and Jianhua Zheng "SMILE: a joint ESA/CAS mission to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere", Proc. SPIE 9905, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 990502 (11 July 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2231984

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