A joint European-Chinese spacecraft has blasted off into orbit to investigate what happens when extreme winds and giant explosions of plasma shot out from the sun slam into earth’s magnetic shield.
Particularly fierce solar storms can knock out satellites, threaten astronauts and create dazzling auroras in the skies known as the northern or southern lights.
To find out more about this little-understood space weather, the van-sized Smile spacecraft is tasked with making the first-ever X-ray observations of the Earth’s magnetic field.
The spacecraft achieved lift-off on a Vega-C rocket yesterday from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Fifty-five minutes later, Smile detached at 700km of altitude above the planet’s surface.
It will be at an altitude of 5,000km when it flies over the South Pole, allowing it to transmit data to the Bernardo O’Higgins research station in Antarctica.
The spacecraft will be 121,000km above the Earth when it swings over the North Pole – an orbit which the European Space Agency (Esa) says will allow the mission to “observe the northern lights non-stop for 45 hours at a time for the first time ever”.
Smile – or the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer – is a joint mission between the Esa and Chinese Academy of Sciences. — AFP
