Europe's Proba 3 Mission: Creating 'artificial eclipses' to study The Sun | ESA

Europe's Proba 3 Mission: Creating 'artificial eclipses' to study The Sun | ESA

The European Space Agency's Proba-3 is an ambitious mission that needs more than a single spacecraft to succeed. In order for Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft to observe the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, its disk-bearing Occulter spacecraft must block out the fiery solar disk. This means Proba-3’s Occulter ends up facing the Sun continuously, making it a valuable platform for science in its own right.

Europe's Proba-3 Mission lifted off on an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) PSLV-XL rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India, on Thursday, December 5, 2024, at 11:34 CET (10:34 GMT, 16:04 local time). ISRO placed both satellites (currently attached) into their designated orbit.

Proba-3 will maintain a fixed configuration as a ‘large rigid structure’ in a highly elliptical orbit to form an approximately 150-meter long solar coronagraph to study the Sun’s faint corona closer than ever before. Europe’s Proba-3 (Project for Onboard Anatomy) consists of two satellites—Coronagraph (310kg) and Occulter (240 kg). The pair must maintain a precise formation down to "a single millimeter" to study the corona, the sun’s outer atmosphere.

Video Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Duration: 9 minutes
Release Date: Dec. 3, 2024

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