Opinion | A role model for China-Europe collaboration in space science

By Augustus K. Yeung

INTRODUCTION

In an unprecedented and unparalleled collaboration, Chinese scientists and their European counterparts have completed key tests for a joint space mission to be launched on a European rocket in 2025, according to an Italian astronomer.

I wonder what the Americans and their Canadian ally would say in hindsight: They have been falsely accusing Chinese scientists in American universities of "stealing" or "spying on" the findings of their high-technological research development projects, much to the fears and frustrations of Chinese scientists.

Under the circumstance, what choice do they have but to cooperate with fellow scientists in Europe?

The solar wind magnetosphere ionosphere link explorer, or SMILE, has been designed and developed jointly by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and European Space Agency (ESA) since 2015 – to create the most powerful tool for studying the Earth's magnetic environment.

Chinese Team Travelled to the Netherlands to Work with Colleagues…

In February, a Chinese team travelled to the Netherlands to work with colleagues at the European Space Research and Technology Centre under the ESA.

They tested whether a prototype satellite of the mission – whose parts, including one from Europe, were assembled at the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites in Shanghai and shipped to Europe – could dock with and separate from the European launcher as designed.

The tests were deemed successful, and "excellent collaboration was established" between the Chinese and European teams and the rocket company Arianespace, according to Italian astronomer Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, the mission's co-principal investigator from University College London.

It marked the first time a satellite made in China was shipped to the ESA, and for a Chinese team to help assemble and test a satellite at an ESA facility.

Numerous spacecraft have observed the sun and its effects on the Earth's magnetosphere, which acts as a protective shield for life on Earth against the supersonic solar winds and cosmic radiation.

Most of the missions had focused on local processes or specific solar events, while none could paint a global picture and support a comprehensive understanding of the issue, she said.

SMILE offers a Novel Approach to Monitoring the Earth's Magnetic Environment globally via a process known as "solar wind charge exchange".

"During this process charged particles in the solar wind exchanged charge with the neutral particles in Earth's upper atmosphere," she said.

In the early 2000s, Branduardi-Raymont and her team proposed to the ESA a couple of candidate missions to use such an idea to study the impact of the solar wind. Unfortunately, their proposals were not chosen.

Then she got in touch with a Chinese space weather scientist Wang Chi in Beijing, who was also keen to develop a mission with similar aims and in 2015 they proposed an ESA-CAS joint mission.

"It was approved, and SMILE was born," she said.

From a highly elliptical polar orbit, SMILE will use four cutting-edge instruments to continuously capture images of the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere in the X-ray and ultraviolet wavebands.

One of those instruments was developed by the University of Leicester with 3 million pounds in funding from the UK Space Agency. The other three were built in China.

Besides the scientific instruments, the ESA and China also share building the satellite system, conducting science operations and other aspects of the project. The mission marks the first time the ESA and China have jointly selected, designed, implemented, launched and operated a space mission together.

SMILE is a new role model for China-Europe collaboration in space science following the successful Double Star mission between the ESA and the China National Space Administration in the 1990s.

"Our collaboration with the Chinese side has been and is very successful, with good exchange of information and flexibility to adapt and resolve any issues that may arise." Branduardi-Raymont said.

Originally expected to launch in 2021, SMILE suffered setbacks because of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical tensions.

The outbreak of the pandemic made planned trips to Europe and the launching site impossible. When devices from the ESA arrived in Shanghai in March last year, the city was under a massive lockdown and the entire team had to live at the institute for weeks to get the work done, said a researcher from the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites.

At first a Canadian team offered to develop one of the four instruments.

"However, their funding would come from the Canadian Space Agency, which decided to pull out of the project after the design had been finalized," a researcher told the Post during the national space science conference in Taiyuan in August last year.

"A Norwegian research station in Antarctica could no longer provide tracking services while SMILE made orbital transfers over the South Pole," said the anonymous researcher. (Source: SCMP)

CONCLUSION

Now we know what the accidental incident over the "spy" Chinese balloons floating in high-altitudes over America and Canadian airspaces is about: it may be part of the Chinese meteoric exploration for wide-spread scientific weather research projects, which would benefit humankind.

The White House and Pentagon have confirmed China's balloons were meant for harmless "meteoric" purposes.

But they turned this otherwise borderless scientific mission into a hot political issue and shot it down with a military missile under Republican pressure, reaping political advantage from a simple incident, which has been going on for years and known to many Western meteoritic scientists.

If the Biden administration fails to break off from this anti-China behavioral pattern (under the pressure from its Republican rivals), then China can be expected to drift farther away from cooperation with America in scientific projects.

China may eventually be forced to tilt towards Russia – if Washington continues to perceive Beijing as an unworthy partner, and to continue to imposingly and impolitely "warn" China not to supply arms and ammunitions to Russia as Antony Blinken has impertinently threatened Wang Yi in Europe.

Wang Yi may want to reply, "I've had enough of your impertinence!"

The author is a freelance writer; formerly Adjunct Lecturer, taught MBA Philosophy of Management, and International Strategy, and online columnist of 3-D Corner (HKU SPACE), University of Hong Kong.

 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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