Scott Nicholas
Thales Alenia Space has inked a contract with the European Space Agency to help design the payload module for a joint science mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The module for the Solar Wind Magnetospheric Ionospheric Link Explorer (SMILE) will host customer furnished science instruments from China, Canada and the U.K., Thales said Monday.
“Thales Alenia Space in the UK is proud to team with ESA experts and to contribute to the SMILE mission, which expects to make an important contribution to our understanding of space weather and, in particular, the physical processes taking place during the continuous interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere,” said Ben Olivier, CEO of Thales Alenia Space in the UK.
ESA will team up with Thales to optimize the various components of the payload module including the system’s structural and thermal elements along with supporting PLM equipment.
The SMILE PLM will also support a control and mass memory unit, power distribution unit and X-band communication system designed to help downlink science data.
