ESA Declares Smile Ready for Science After 23 September Review

ESA announced the milestone on its science pages. The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (Smile) is now approved to start returning data on how Earth responds to the charged particles streaming off the Sun. The spacecraft launched on 19 May and reached its science orbit on 20 June.

Smile is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. ESA built the payload module, which carries three of the four instruments, supplied the soft X-ray imager (SXI), procured the launcher and ran assembly, integration and testing. CAS built the spacecraft platform and the other three instruments, and operates the vehicle in orbit.

The four instruments are SXI, the ultraviolet aurora imager (UVI), a magnetometer (MAG) and a light ion analyser (LIA). ESA says the payload will collect data on solar storms, geomagnetic storms and space weather, including how solar activity interacts with Earth's magnetic field and can affect electronic infrastructure on and around Earth.

First footage from the ultraviolet imager

ESA published the first footage from UVI. It is the first camera since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the North Pole in ultraviolet light. The video was taken on 24 July 2026, two weeks after the instrument was switched on, and shows activity in the auroral ring caused by a disturbance in Earth's magnetic field from a rush of solar wind particles.

"The Smile mission is a testament to the trust built between our teams, their dedication to excellence and their determination to find solutions whatever the challenge," says Professor Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science. "Smile is now approved to begin science operations. This is a very important milestone, a true pleasure to announce, and I am sure our excellent collaboration will deliver ground-breaking data to scientists around the world."

UVI is now recording the auroras for 45 hours at a time, which ESA describes as a record. The instrument is a European contribution to the mission.

The X-ray camera has also been switched on and has returned its first images, both showing the aftermath of a distant exploded star. Those were taken as a check that the camera works as expected. According to ESA, the camera itself is working very well, but when pointed towards Earth it currently detects too much unwanted stray light.

To cut that stray light, the team is changing specific settings and implementing software updates onboard. ESA, the consortium of universities and companies behind the instrument and the Chinese team leading spacecraft operations are working on the problem together. ESA notes the instrument has a versatile design that can be adjusted remotely.

There is also a natural fix in the schedule. Smile is steadily pointing farther away from Earth, and the North Pole emits less light as the northern hemisphere moves towards winter. The unwanted light is expected to reach a minimum in mid-October. At that point, ESA says, SXI would take its first good image of the magnetopause, where the solar wind meets Earth's magnetic field, or the northern polar cusp, a hole in the magnetosphere at the North Pole where charged solar wind particles are funnelled towards Earth's surface.

ESA also noted that Smile went from a handful of disconnected pieces to collecting science data in just over two years, and pointed to a new documentary film covering the development period between June 2024 and May 2026. The film includes footage of spacecraft parts arriving at ESA's technical centre in the Netherlands, being attached together, tested and sent to Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana for launch. It includes interviews with scientists and engineers from across Europe and is the final instalment in the "Let's Smile" series, following four shorter episodes. Smile sits inside ESA's Cosmic Vision programme.

Autonomy and refuelling move closer to orbit

The Smile milestone is not the only space science development in the dossier this week, and the day's other stories point in a different direction: making spacecraft less dependent on the ground.

On 30 September, Tech.eu reported that Lithuania's Blackswan Space closed a €2.5 million second round led by Iron Wolf Capital, bringing total funding to €3.2 million. Other investors included Lemonade Stand, former NanoAvionics co-founder Linas Sargautis, NGL Ventures and Tomas Žalandauskas. Founded in 2019, the company builds a Mission Design Simulator for autonomous missions and an RPO Kit, a plug-and-play payload for rendezvous and proximity operations using vision-based target detection, identification and tracking. It has grown from two technical experts to 25 people across Vilnius, London and Denver.

Blackswan plans to test the RPO Kit in orbit in the fourth quarter of 2027. Tech.eu reports that this will be followed by ASTRAL, described as the first European in-space refuelling mission, planned for 2028 and backed by up to €3.3 million from the UK Space Agency and ESA. Jake Geer, managing director of Orbit Fab UK, said Blackswan was selected to provide the RPO Kit for that demonstration.

Iron Wolf Capital founding partner Viktoras Jucikas framed the case for the investment bluntly. A satellite in orbit today, he said, is blind and deaf without the ground: it cannot tell what has parked next to it, avoid a collision on its own or be easily repaired or refuelled.

On the same day, SpaceNews reported that space mining company AstroForge plans to fly a spacecraft next year that will test its ability to operate fully autonomously using artificial intelligence. That report, by Jeff Foust, is dated 30 September.

Varda raises $251M for manufacturing in space

Endpoints News reported on 30 September that California startup Varda raised a $251 million Series D to advance pharmaceutical manufacturing in space, an area the publication describes as long seen as the next step for drug production. The story was published at 11:35 EDT and updated at 12:52 EDT.

Varda's funding is the largest single number in the dossier and sits alongside a broader run of capital announcements this week: Blackswan's €3.2 million total and the €3.3 million behind ASTRAL. The three do not reflect the same kind of money. Varda's round is two orders of magnitude larger than Blackswan's, and the two European figures cover a demonstration mission rather than a company.

Elsewhere, Ars Technica reported on 30 September that Russia's long-delayed next-generation crewed spacecraft, referred to in a recent Interfax story as PTK NP, may finally see tests. Roscosmos chief executive Dmitry Bakanov told Interfax that parachute system tests will begin this fall, with a drop and testing in the Far East. The report also mentions tests in emergency rescue modes during a launch pad emergency later this year, and tests in the zone of maximum dynamic pressures in 2027. Ars Technica notes it is not clear whether real flight hardware, boilerplate vehicles or mockups will be used, and that Russian officials are holding to a debut crewed launch in 2028 or 2029, likely on the Angara A5M rocket.

That is a story about hardware that has slipped for two decades; Smile is a story about hardware that is now working, with one instrument still being tuned. The distinction matters for anyone tracking where public space money goes.

Carnegie Mellon University announced on 30 September a $500 million gift from Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, renaming its School of Computer Science the Kenneth C. Griffin School of Computer Science. The university said the gift is part of a $1 billion philanthropic investment in its Pittsburgh mission and a broader $3 billion commitment. The announcement describes new compute resources, including GPUs, servers, storage and networking, for researchers in the school.

The rest of the week's space coverage in the dossier is background rather than news. Ars Technica's piece notes that four years ago Vladimir Putin spoke confidently about the then-named Eagle spacecraft and a resumption of Russia's lunar programme, while ESA's Smile page reaches back to a collaboration agreement with Europe that never produced a crewed vehicle.