Science
SMILE
Magnetosphere / Space Weather · ESA / Chinese Academy of Sciences
Right now
LiveIt moves every second. See exactly where it is — worked out from its orbit, on your own device — on the live 3D globe.
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Launched just weeks ago in May 2026, SMILE is humanity's first attempt to photograph Earth's magnetic shield in X-rays — imaging the magnetosphere the way a doctor images a body. This ESA-Chinese joint mission will map how the boundary of Earth's magnetic field moves and flexes in response to solar wind for up to 40 continuous hours per orbit, using a soft X-ray imager and UV aurora camera simultaneously. It will answer a deceptively simple question we've never been able to answer before: what does Earth's magnetic shield actually look like from the outside?
Its orbit
- Orbit
- Highly Ellipticalswings far out, then dives back close to Earth
- Altitude
- 3,954–74,334 mi (6,364–119,629 km)
- Inclination
- 70.0°
- One orbit
- 2.1 days
- NORAD ID
- 69123
- Int’l designator
- 2026-109A
- Launched
- 2026
Orbital elements from CelesTrak, as of 19 Sep 2026.
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