Satellites developed to create artificial solar eclipse are launched by the European Space Agency
The European Space Agency launched two satellites on Thursday designed to create artificial solar eclipses, which will allow scientists to better study the solar corona.
On Thursday morning (5), two satellites designed by the European Space Agency ( ESA ) were launched into space aboard the Indian rocket PSLV-XL, from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, near Chennai, in southern India . These satellites were developed to artificially create solar eclipses in space, thus allowing scientists to study the solar corona .
The solar corona is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere, thin and composed of plasma, and the source of the solar wind and space weather. Until now, it has only been visible for brief moments during solar eclipses from Earth, and its observations are limited to a few minutes and can be hampered by space weather conditions .
So, this ESA mission comes to help in the sense of allowing continuous observation of the solar corona . Understand better below how this will work.
One satellite blocks sunlight and the other collects information from the solar corona
Initially, the launch of the mission, called Proba-3 ( Project for On-Board Autonomy 3 ), was scheduled for Wednesday (4), but a technical problem in the preparations during the pre-launch caused it to be postponed to this Thursday (5).
Then, the satellites left Earth at 4:04 p.m. local time (7:34 a.m. in Brasília). According to ESA, the mission took off successfully , as shown in the video below, released on the agency's official profile on social network X:
The two satellites will fly together as one, maintaining a precise formation with a margin of error of just one millimeter. The mission "has the potential to change the nature of future space expeditions", ESA said in a statement. They will be aligned in such a way that one will cast its shadow on the other. And one will block the Sun's fiery disc so the other can conduct extended observations of the solar corona.
The operation will require a precision never before achieved in this type of mission, at a distance of just 144 meters from each other . And how will this happen? Equipped with a large shield 1.40 meters in diameter, the first satellite will play the role of the Moon, hiding the Sun. Then, the second satellite will carry the ASPIICS coronagraph to observe (and collect data) the solar corona in this shadow created .
The two satellites, which are expected to complete an elliptical orbit around the Earth in 19.7 hours, will reach an altitude of up to 60,000 km and will operate in this manner for two years . The satellites will be able to produce 50 artificial solar eclipses per year, each lasting six hours.
They will fly in formation, using optical sensors, flashing LEDs and a high-precision laser system to automatically adjust the distance and orientation between them.
The Proba-3 mission will be operational from March 2025, when the first images are expected , after the planned separation of the two satellites in early 2025, and will complement the observations of the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe probes of the American agency NASA .
News references
“ European satellites launched to create artificial solar eclipses in a tech demo ”. December 5, 2024. Marcia Dunn.
“ Proba-3 mission left Earth to observe the solar corona ”. December 5, 2024. Gaúcha ZH Editorial Team.
“ Agency launches satellites designed to create artificial solar eclipses ”. November 5, 2024. Thâmara Kaoru.