22 February 2022
There is progress in the SMILE mission. ESTEC engineers tested the 3 m-long magnetometer boom of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (Smile) provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Covid travelling restrictions prevented the Chinese team from being physically present in the Netherlands. They were able to follow via a real-time video stream the deployment of the boom under helium-filled balloons to simulate the weightlessness conditions of space.
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