Europe and China are launching a joint space mission to study how Earth’s magnetic field shields the planet from harmful solar radiation, a rare example of collaboration as space competition intensifies.
The ambitious project aims to understand how solar turbulence generates “space weather” and to predict geomagnetic storms that can disrupt terrestrial communications, knock out power grids and damage electronic equipment.
A Vega-C rocket is set to launch the 2.3 tonne satellite, called Smile, on Thursday. It will blast off from the European spaceport in French Guiana into a highly elliptical orbit that will take it as far as 121,000km above the North Pole.
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