China advances space mission with Europe amid ambitious exploration agenda

The development of in-orbit detectors for a joint China-Europe space mission has been completed, and they are poised for integration into a satellite platform located in Europe within the year, according to the mission's chief scientist.

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a joint mission between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the European Space Agency (ESA) that aims to deepen the understanding of the connection between Earth and the sun by observing the dynamic interaction between solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere.

SMILE is scheduled for launch in 2025 from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, said Wang Chi, director of the National Space Science Center (NSSC) of CAS, at the first International Conference on Space Science and Technology, hosted by Beijing Institute of Technology, on Saturday.

At the meeting, Wang highlighted China's forward-looking agenda for its space exploration, emphasizing pioneering research into dark matter and gravitational waves in space, the search for habitable planets and signs of alien life, and the advancement of space-based biological and physical science.

Wang unveiled the Hongmeng project, also known as Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelengths (DSL), which is an innovative endeavor set to open a window on the Dark Ages of the universe using megahertz-level radio waves. The mission is designed to include one mother satellite and nine daughter satellites operating in a 300-kilometer circular lunar orbit, Wang said.

Also on the roadmap for China's deep-space exploration, the Earth 2.0 mission will see an array of telescopes sent into the Earth-Sun L2 orbit to explore habitable, Earth-like planets outside the solar system.

Wang also cited the Enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) project, which will launch payloads into a highly elliptical orbit to explore still-mysterious celestial bodies like black holes and neutron stars.

The eXTP project has already reached out to scientists from more than 20 countries, including Italy, Germany and France, with offers to cooperate.

China is also expected to launch satellites such as Taiji-2 into a solar orbit to form a constellation with Taiji-1, which was sent into space in 2019, and undertake space-based gravitational wave detection, according to Wang.

A consortium of scientists from China, France and Russia also presented their latest findings and perspectives in the field of space science at the meeting.

Chang'e-6 mission

French space scientist Pierre-Yves Meslin outlined the progress of Detection of Outgassing RadoN (DORN), a scientific instrument developed by French scientists and carried by China's Chang'e-6 lander, and praised the successful cooperation between France and China.

After witnessing the landing of Chang'e-6 in early June, Pierre-Yves Meslin told CGTN that "We have been thinking about this moment for years and even more intensely for the last few months and weeks and days. We were watching the moon every night here in Beijing."

"We are very glad to be on the surface of the moon. Our instrument will start working. Now the pressure will be on us to succeed in our measurements."

He said the instrument is designed to study the origin and dynamics of the lunar exosphere. It will try to measure a radioactive gas called radon that is produced by lunar rocks in the lunar interior. "This gas might migrate from the warm regions of the moon to the cold regions of the moon, and we will try to understand its dynamics in the lunar environment. It will be the first time to measure it on the surface of the moon."

"Thanks to China so much for taking us to the moon," Sylvestre Maurice, a French astronomer from the University of Toulouse, told CGTN after he watched the landing process in a control room at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"The landing was absolutely amazing. It's hard to land on a planet, and it's very hard especially on the moon. Don't think it's easy. Remember it's on the far side of the moon where we cannot see. And China even had to put another relay satellite to watch the landing. They landed right where they wanted to. So it's quite an achievement, something we've been looking for for so many years," said Maurice.

"The far side of the moon is very unique. The South Pole-Aitken Basin is a huge basin. There was an impact long time ago to remove most of the crust, so we might have landed as close as possible to the mantle of the moon," Maurice said, adding that "as planetary scientists, the best thing we can dream of is to have samples in our lab. Nothing is better than having samples here, where we can study them and really go into the details of the story of the moon."

He said French scientists have the lunar sample returned by the Chang'e-5 mission and would carry out research on it. "We were very lucky to collaborate with China on different projects including the Chang'e lunar program and the Tianwen-1 Mars mission," he added.

(With input from Xinhua)