ESA launches Proba-3 satellites to simulate total solar eclipse
Two European Space Agency (ESA) satellites assembled and tested in Belgium were launched on Thursday and placed in elliptical orbit from India. Their mission includes studying the sun’s outer atmosphere by simulating a full solar eclipse.
The launch had been scheduled to take place on Wednesday but had to be postponed for a day due to a technical problem.
The Proba-3 satellites were launched at 11.34 Belgian time using a polar satellite launch vehicle at the Indian Space Research Organization in Andhra Pradesh. The vehicle has the power to place the combined 550kg satellites into orbit at a distance of up to 60,000km from Earth.
Formation flight
“This is a unique precision formation flight mission: the satellites will fly together, maintaining a fixed configuration as if they were a single structure in space,” an ESA spokesperson said.
The pair will remain attached while initial commissioning takes place, overseen from mission control at the European Space Security and Education Centre in Redu, Luxembourg province.
"This is a unique precision mission: the satellites will fly together, maintaining a fixed configuration as if they were a single structure"
The satellites, which were assembled and tested in Kruibeke, East Flanders, will be oriented so that one blocks the sun from the other. They will align with the sun while 144m apart to cast a shadow from one to the other, creating artificial solar eclipses that reveal the sun’s faint outer atmosphere without being blinded by its brightness.
One will carry the optical telescope and the second will carry part of the coronagraph, manufactured at the Centre Spatial de Liège.
Unprecedented observation
The Royal Observatory of Belgium is overseeing the scientific operation of the ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun) instrument, which will allow unprecedented observation of the sun.
"The solar corona is an important element of our solar system"
The ESA aims to study the corona, the radiating rings around the sun that appear during a solar eclipse. This is where the solar storms occur that can disrupt Earth’s electronic infrastructure.
“Despite its faintness, the solar corona is an important element of our solar system, larger in expanse than the sun itself, and the source of space weather and the solar wind,” said Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
Without a solar eclipse, the corona is not visible because the sun is too bright. An eclipse normally lasts only a few minutes, but the Proba-3 should make it possible to study the corona continuously for six to seven hours during each approximately 19-hour orbit around Earth.
Infrared view of the reflected laser beam during calibration testing carried out by ESA, MDA and Centre Spatial de Liège personnel at Redwire Space in Kruibeke in February © PHOTO ESA / M PEDOUSSAUT / J VERSLUYS
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