SMILE Mission

by Monica Scorța, eng

06.04.2026

Credit photo: European Space Agency

SMILE (Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) mission is scheduled to launch on April 9, 2026 and it will provide major insights into space weather and the dynamic relationship between the Sun and Earth.

Early this April, Vega-C rocket will carry on-board SMILE and launch it in highly elliptical orbit, travelling as far as 121,000 km above the North Pole to gain a wide-angle view of the Earth’s magnetic environment and dip as low as 5,000 km over the South Pole to transmit data to ground stations.

This mission will help scientists understand Earth’s Magnetic Response to Solar Activity, Solar ang Geomagnetic Storms, the Drivers of Auroras and Fundamental Science of the Solar System. Currently, the space weather is studied using “in-situ” satellites (which measure the environment immediately around them), or ground stations. SMILE will be the first to: capture x-ray “videos” of the magnetosphere – using a technique called “Solar Wind Charge Exchange (SWCX) with a specialized “Lobster-Eye” telescope – and link solar input to Auroral Output – by watching the Sun’s impact on one end (the magnetopause) and the result at the other (the ionosphere) simultaneously.

Credit photo: https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/smile#mission-status

With SMILE we are aiming to foresee and mitigate events that can affect our lives, like disruptions in the navigation and communication systems and to understand different events that happened to planets in our solar system, and not only, like probing whether Mars lost its water and atmosphere because it lost its magnetic field.

SMILE opens the paths to new discoveries and even to new partnerships, being the first-ever joint mission where ESA and China (CAS) have collaborated on every stage – from design and science goals to hardware and launch.

As the countdown to April 9 reaches its final stages, the SMILE mission stands ready to redefine our relationship with the Sun. By capturing the first-ever "global movie" of Earth’s invisible magnetic shield, this landmark collaboration between ESA and CAS will transform space weather from a series of unpredictable events into a visible, understandable system. 

References:

• https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Smile/Smile_factsheet2#:~:text=Smile%20will%20be%20the%20first,interacts%20with%20Earth's%20magnetic%20environment.
• https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Smile/Smile_s_science_toolbox#:~:text=The%20pair%20of%20in%2Dsitu,image%20Earth's%20northern%20auroral%20regions
• https://www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical-physical-sciences/case-studies/2020/oct/smile-solar-wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere-link-explorer#:~:text=SMILE%20is%20a%20novel%20space,%2Dthe%2Dart%20detection%20techniques
• https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/smile#plm-payload-module

Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” novel or real-life science developments?

by Alice Păun, PhD 

20.03.2026

Photograph: Multimedia Production Team, MPT; Arnold, Melanie; Brice, Maximilien, CERN

CERN’s BASE experiment (Baryon Antibaryon Symmetry Experiment) tested the transportation of antimatter in a special trap containing isolated antiprotons. This is amazing news that marks the beginning of a new era in Particle Physics.

Antimatter is similar to a mirror version of ordinary matter; particles are almost identical to ordinary matter but with opposite electric charge and magnetic moment. According to the Big Bang theory, at the beginning of the Universe there should have been equal quantities of matter and antimatter produced. Since these two types of matter are equal but opposite, they annihilate each other in the same way an electron annihilates when interacting with a positron. Hence, the most intriguing question arises: Where did all the antimatter go, since at the present time we are only seeing ordinary matter around us?

The BASE experiment at CERN is producing, storing, and studying antimatter with extremely high precision. BASE facility is also known as the “antimatter factory”. However, an extremely important step in investigating the properties of antimatter is the precision of the measurements. Since the “antimatter factory” does not provide sufficient precision due to the magnetic field fluctuations generated by the machines and equipment of the facility, it is of great importance to find solutions in more suitable facilities. Therefore, the development of the BASE-STEP project which aims to contain and transfer antimatter to other facilities in Europe, like Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Leibnitz University Hannover or other facilities that could be able to perform very-high-precision antiproton measurements.

The innovative antimatter trap (also called the Penning trap) developed by the BASE experiment is based on a vacuum chamber which uses magnetic and electric fields to contain the antimatter, not allowing it to interact with the ordinary matter. This apparatus also contains a superconducting magnet, liquid Helium cryogenic cooling, and a generator to power the cryocooler throughout the transport period.

This unbelievable news comes from the BASE experiment’s team at CERN that succeeded to contain and transport antimatter, more specifically a cloud of 92 antiprotons, inside a Penning trap, with a truck across the site in the vicinity of the “antimatter factory”.

Reference:
https://home.cern/news/press-release/experiments/base-experiment-cern-succeeds-transporting-antimatter

Researchers create a new molecule and study it using a quantum computer

by Maria Ișfan, PhD student

13.03.2026

An international group of scientists from IBM, The University of Manchester, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of Regensburg obtained a molecule never seen before: C13Cl2.

What makes this molecule special? First is, the way it was synthesized – or, better said, engineered. Such a molecule cannot be found in nature. It was literally assembled in an IBM laboratory, atom by atom, using voltage pulses. Second is what this engineering could achieve: a molecule whose electrons do not move in the way we know from traditional chemistry, but on half-Mobius, or, helicular, orbitals.

How did the scientists confirm the never-before-seen structure and behavior of the molecule? With a quantum computer, because the task would overwhelm a classical one. In order to simulate such a large, complicate and new molecule, it is necessary to simulate the quantum properties and interactions, such as entanglement, that make up the molecule. This is very computationally expensive and delicate to implement. But why struggle if there is already a kind of computer that already operates on quantum spookyness? Quantum computers are the best choice for studying chemical composites, with clear advantages over traditional computers. Of course, the group used an IBM quantum computer and proved the exotic shape of the molecular orbitals, making Feynman’s dream come true. They also found the mechanism behind this shape: a helical pseudo-Jahn-Teller effect, or, in other words, the electrons have very well defined and stable states.

Left, a scanning tunneling microscopy image of the new half-Möbius molecule's electron orbital density; right, a simulated STM image of the molecule's orbital density, which was made using an IBM quantum computer.

Source: Igor Rončević et al. ,A molecule with half-Möbius topology.Science0,eaea3321, DOI:10.1126/science.aea3321

Cat’s Eye Nebula

by Florentina Pîslan, PhD student

06.03.2026

Images of the Cat’s Eye Nebula captured by the Euclid mission and the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, ESA Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/Q1-2025, J.-C. Cuillandre & E. Bertin (CEA Paris-Saclay), Z. Tsvetanov

One of the most impressive displays of color in the Universe is represented by nebulae. These are large clouds of dust and gas and are part of the life cycle of a star, being either the place where stars are born or the remains of ‘dead’ stars. The multitude of colors comes from the elements they are made of and their temperatures, and these can be captured through telescopes thanks to the different filters used by astronomers, which target specific wavelengths. Most nebulae are diffuse, meaning they do not have clear boundaries, and they can be classified according to their composition and the way they form. Thus, we can encounter: planetary nebulae (they have the appearance of a diffuse planet and form when a star that has reached the Red Giant stage loses its outer layers), emission nebulae (clouds of ionized gas that emit their own light, including in the visible spectrum), reflection nebulae (clouds of dust that reflect light coming from nearby stars), dark nebulae (also known as absorption nebulae; they are very dense dust clouds that block and absorb the light emitted by the stars behind them), and supernova remnants (a bright cloud of matter expelled during a supernova explosion).

A nebula that has attracted the attention of astronomers since 1864 is the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula, also known as NGC 6543. It is located in the constellation Draco, and observations made by the Gaia mission indicate that it lies at a distance of about 4,300 light-years. The most recent images of this nebula come from complementary observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Euclid mission.

Through the ‘Image of the Month’ project, the European Space Agency frequently makes spectacular images of objects in the Universe—captured by the Hubble Space Telescope—available to the public. To stay up to date with them, visit the website https://esahubble.org/images/potm/ .

References:

•    https://astromania.org/nebuloase/

•    https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Hubble_Euclid_zoom_into_cosmic_eye 

•    https://esahubble.org/images/potm/