Watch Vega C rocket launch European-Chinese space weather satellite to orbit tonight

ESA's Smile mission launch - YouTube

A European-Chinese space weather mission will launch to orbit tonight (May 18), and you can watch the action live.

Artist's impression showing a shiny, golden spacecraft attached to a white and grey rocket part with earth in the background — Artist's illustration of the European-Chinese SMILE space weather satellite attached to its Vega C rocket in space. (Image credit: ESA/ATG Europe)

SMILE (short for Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) will use four science instruments to study how Earth is affected by the solar wind, the flow of charged particles streaming constantly from the sun.

"In doing so, SMILE will improve our understanding of solar storms, geomagnetic storms and the science of space weather," ESA officials wrote in a mission description.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences is responsible for SMILE's satellite platform, spacecraft operations and three of the four science instruments — the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI), the Light Ion Analyser (LIA) and the Magnetometer (MAG).

ESA provided SMILE's payload module, the other science instrument (the Soft X-ray Imager, or SXI), the rocket and assembly and testing integration and services. The agency also contributed to the UVI instrument and will help with operations in orbit, according to ESA's mission description.

If all goes according to plan tonight, the three-stage Vega C will deploy SMILE in a circular orbit 435 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth about 56 minutes after liftoff.

The spacecraft will then conduct 11 engine burns over the next 25 days, changing its orbit to a highly elliptical one that takes it 75,185 miles (121,000 km) above the North Pole and 3,107 miles (5,000 km) above the South Pole.

After that, the mission team will perform a number of checkouts to make sure SMILE and its instruments are working properly.

"About three months after launch, the team will receive the first X-ray and ultraviolet images, and then finally begin the science that SMILE is designed to do. The planned mission lifetime is three years," ESA officials wrote in the mission description.

The 115-foot-tall (35 meters) Vega C, which was developed by ESA, debuted in July 2022. It has six flights under its belt to date, five of them successful. Tonight's launch will be the first Vega C mission operated by the Italian company Avio; the others were managed by France-based Arianespace.

Michael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.