Final preparations are being made for the Proba-3 mission set to launch on Wednesday in India. This mission involves two satellites that will work in close formation to create artificial solar eclipses, allowing the measurement of the sun's corona.
If the two satellites operate as intended, the lead spacecraft will cast a shadow on its partner, allowing instruments on the latter to measure the sun’s corona.If the two satellites operate as intended, the lead spacecraft will cast a shadow on its partner, allowing instruments on the latter to measure the sun’s corona.
All being well, the spacecraft will blast off from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the Bay of Bengal coast, at 4.08pm local time on Wednesday. After a four-month voyage, the probes will reach a highly elliptic orbit that swoops as close as 370 miles to Earth before swinging out for more than 37,000 miles.
The €200m Proba-3 mission promises to transform scientists’ understanding of the corona by producing 50 artificial solar eclipses a year, each lasting six hours. The lead spacecraft carries a 1.4-metre wide occulter disc to block the sun as seen from the second spacecraft, turning the pair into a 150-metre-long instrument called a coronagraph.
The Proba-3 spacecraft will swing around the planet once every 19.7 hours for two years. For six hours in every orbit the satellites will fly in formation, drawing on optical sensors and flashing LEDs to locate one another, and a precision laser system to automatically finesse their distance and orientation. The first images from the mission are expected as soon as March 2025.
SATELLITES SOLAR ECLIPSE PROBA-3 MISSION SUN's CORONA EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
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