magnetosphere

ESA and China's joint Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer launched on 19 May from French Guiana after a six-week delay, beginning a three-year mission to image the magnetosphere in soft X-rays and ultraviolet for the first time.

A subsystem production defect forced Avio to delay the Vega-C VV29 flight carrying ESA and China's SMILE magnetosphere-imaging mission, originally set for April 9, with no new date confirmed.

The joint ESA-Chinese Academy of Sciences SMILE spacecraft reached French Guiana after a two-week ocean voyage and is preparing for an April launch on a Vega-C rocket. It will be the first mission to image Earth's magnetosphere in soft X-rays.

A 15-hour JWST observation has produced the first three-dimensional map of Uranus's ionosphere, confirming decades-long atmospheric cooling and exposing how the planet's tilted, offset magnetic field sculpts complex auroral structures unlike any seen elsewhere in the solar system.