Before Smile can begin studying how Earth responds to the streams of particles and bursts of radiation from the Sun, the spacecraft had to complete an extraordinary journey here on Earth.

Follow the mission through its final launch preparations at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, from fuelling and encapsulation inside its protective fairing, to meeting the rest of the Vega-C rocket that will take it to space.

Smile is flying to space on Vega-C flight VV29. At 35 m tall, Vega-C weighs 210 tonnes on the launch pad and the rocket will take Smile to orbit with three solid-propellant-powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over for a precise drop-off around Earth.

Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint European-Chinese mission to study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic environment from a unique highly elliptical orbit. During the next three years, it will go high above the North Pole every two days to collect X-ray and ultraviolet images of Earth’s magnetic shield and the northern lights.