{"id":615967,"date":"2019-05-08T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=d9e33db6f360493e9c15b0ca879bab4b"},"modified":"2019-05-08T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T09:00:00","slug":"antenna-for-proba-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=615967","title":{"rendered":"Antenna for Proba-3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/var\/esa\/storage\/images\/esa_multimedia\/images\/2019\/05\/antenna_for_proba-3\/19376492-1-eng-GB\/Antenna_for_Proba-3_small.jpg\" width=\"170\" height=\"95\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nThis patch antenna under test at ESA\u2019s technical heart is designed to maintain a radio link between the two satellites making up the Proba-3 mission, allowing the pair to fly in formation to maintain an artificial eclipse of the Sun.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAiming for launch in 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Engineering_Technology\/Proba_Missions\/Mission2\">Proba-3<\/a>&nbsp;is ESA\u2019s \u2013 and the world\u2019s \u2013 first precision formation flying mission. A pair of satellites will fly together maintaining a fixed configuration as a \u2018large rigid structure\u2019 in space to prove formation flying technologies.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe mission will demonstrate formation flying in the context of a large-scale science experiment. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zWRIkek4q3o\">The paired satellites will together form a 150-m long solar coronagraph<\/a> to study the Sun\u2019s faint corona closer to the solar rim than has ever before been achieved.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nInter-satellite links will be maintained using this radio antenna, which was developed along with its associated electronics by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tekever.com\/\">Tekever<\/a>&nbsp;in Portugal.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nThe antenna is seen during testing at ESA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Engineering_Technology\/Test_centre\/Antenna_Test_Facilities\">Compact Antenna Test Range<\/a>, part of ESA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/About_Us\/ESTEC\">ESTEC<\/a>&nbsp;technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. The CATR facilities allowed detailed analysis of the pattern of the signal emitting from the antenna.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This patch antenna under test at ESA\u2019s technical heart is designed to maintain a radio link between the two satellites making up the Proba-3 mission, allowing the pair to fly in formation to maintain an artificial eclipse of the Sun.<\/p>\n<p>Aimin&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=615967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615968,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615967\/revisions\/615968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=615967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=615967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=615967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}