SMILE MWG Special Issue Published

The Sun continuously emits streams of particles known as solar wind with an embedded interplanetary magnetic field into space. Upon reaching near-Earth space, they dynamically interact with the terrestrial magnetic fields and plasma, releasing mass, momentum, and energy of the solar wind into the geospace environment system. The coupling between solar wind, magnetosphere, and ionosphere is a crucial link in the Sun–Earth interaction processes. 

To reveal the global scenario of such a coupled complex system, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) was proposed. SMILE is a joint spacecraft mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) with an expected launch in 2025. 

Before the launch of SMILE, there are several problems to be solved, including: what is the expected luminosity of the magnetosheath and cusp emissions, how to derive the boundary positions from the X-ray images, how to extract useful information from a noisy image, etc. These are the research scopes of the SMILE Modeling Working Group (MWG). The recent progress of MWG has been published in the Earth and Planetary Physics (EPP) journal as a special issue on Modeling and Data Analysis Methods for the SMILE mission. 

This special issue is composed of 22 articles, categorized into the following seven topics: (1) instrument descriptions of the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), (2) numerical modeling of the X-ray signals, (3) data processing of the X-ray images, (4) boundary tracing methods from the simulated images, (5) physical phenomena and a mission

concept related to the scientific goals of SMILE-SXI, (6) studies of the aurora, and (7) ground-based support for SMILE. For detailed information, please visit: http://www.eppcgs.org/article/doi/10.26464/epp2023089?viewType=HTML&pageType=en

MWG special issue presents work in several representative directions that took place during the pre-study period of the SMILE mission. Many similar inquiries are still ongoing. The modeling working group is open to all investigators who are interested in scientific inquiries that can be advanced by SMILE.

 Cover Figure of the Special Issue

Special Issue Contents