Smile arrives at Europe's Spaceport

The Smile spacecraft has arrived at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. During the coming weeks, the spacecraft will go through final preparations for its launch on a Vega-C rocket between 8 April and 7 May.

Following a two-week journey from the Netherlands, the Maritime Nantaise Colibri cargo ship carrying Smile docked in Kourou, French Guiana on Thursday 26 February.

Smile is one of the more distinctive science missions in the current pipeline because it is designed to study how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere. So while the headline is about arrival in French Guiana, the larger story is that another major heliophysics mission is getting close enough to launch that the timeline is now visible in day-to-day operations. For MLI, that makes it a solid midday addition: same-day, source-linked, operationally real, and tied to a mission with clear scientific upside once it gets off the ground.