The Smile mission, a joint European-Chinese venture, achieved its designated science orbit on June 20, 2026. The spacecraft is now beginning a two-month commissioning campaign to activate and test its suite of scientific instruments.
Smile carries a toolkit of instruments designed to study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere. The commissioning phase involves systematic switching on and calibration of each payload before regular science operations can commence.
The mission team had awaited this orbital insertion milestone after the spacecraft's journey from Earth. With the orbit now achieved, scientists expect to begin gathering data on space weather phenomena within the coming months.
In a separate development, NASA selected Rocket Lab under its VADR launch services contract to handle two upcoming missions. The PolSIR instrument will study ice clouds using polarized submillimeter radiometry, while TSIS-2 will measure total and spectral solar irradiance critical for climate models.
Rocket Lab's Electron vehicle will carry both payloads under a fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. The dual selection underscores NASA's strategy of leveraging commercial small launchers for dedicated rides to heliophysics and Earth science orbits.