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ESA\u2019s eclipse-making Proba-3 double satellite mission has made it to space! Learn more about Proba-3 from the mission team as they bid farewell to their spacecraft, while ESA’s Director General Josef Aschbacher wishes the team the best of luck.<\/p>\n
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The latest member of ESA\u2019s family of in-orbit demonstration missions, Proba-3 is in fact two spacecraft being launched together, which will perform precise formation flying, accurate to a single millimetre, about the thickness of an average fingernail. To prove their performance, Proba-3 has been devoted to an ambitious scientific goal. The pair will line up precisely with the Sun 150 m apart so that one casts a precisely controlled shadow onto the other.<\/p>\n
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By blocking out the fiery disc of the Sun, Proba-3\u2019s \u2018Occulter\u2019 spacecraft will mimic a terrestrial total solar eclipse, to open up views of the Sun\u2019s faint surrounding atmosphere, or \u2018corona\u2019, which is a million times fainter than its parent star. Proba-3\u2019s second \u2018Coronagraph\u2019 spacecraft hosts the optical instrument that will observe the solar corona.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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