The European Space Agency launched the Proba-3 mission from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Dec 5. The much-awaited project promises to develop artificial solar eclipses by which scientists will be in a position to study, for the first time in history, the sun’s outer atmosphere, also known as the corona.
The Proba-3 mission consists of two spacecraft, the Coronagraph Spacecraft (CSC) and the Occulter (OSC). With high-precision formation flying technology, the satellites will come into alignment with millimeter accuracy, placing the OSC in front of the bright disk of the sun, where it will cast a shadow onto the CSC. This eclipse will be controlled for up to six hours, much longer than natural eclipses.
The corona is a region of scientific interest, which is otherwise invisible due to the bright surface of the sun. Although the sun’s surface temperature is about 5,500°C, the corona reaches as high as 3 million°C. The temperature of this corona difference is one of the mission’s objectives. Instruments on board include the ASPICCS coronagraph, which will obtain high-resolution images of the corona to study phenomena such as plasma waves and solar wind acceleration.
Beyond scientific discovery, Proba-3 will validate PFF technology, which is a must for future space missions that require the precise coordination of satellites. This mission could transform the way we study space weather and predict geomagnetic storms by simulating eclipse conditions without atmospheric interference.
Further cementing the imperative for international cooperation for the exploration of space, Proba-3 pushes toward unlocking new discoveries of the solar corona with an ESA novel approach, thereby unleashing possible breakthroughs to understand better the effects that the sun has on Earth.
The Proba-3 enters regular eclipses in 2025 to mark another milestone for a new tool to investigate universe phenomena in general.
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