Twin spacecraft will launch to create an artificial solar eclipse

The Proba-3 mission consists of two spacecraft that will fly in close formation to study the sun, with the shadow of one creating an artificial solar eclipse from the perspective of the other

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

14 November 2024

The two Proba-3 spacecraft will work together to create an artificial solar eclipse

ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) is aiming to create an artificial eclipse in space with its upcoming Proba-3 mission, which will help study the sun and demonstrate extremely precise formation flying, down to just a millimetre.

Scheduled to launch on an Indian PSLV-XL rocket on 4 December, the mission comprises two spacecraft. After launch, they will be placed into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth that comes as close as 600 kilometres to the planet, but as far as 60,000 kilometres from it.

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One spacecraft, called the Occulter, is equipped with a 1.4-metre-wide disc made of carbon fibre and plastic. The other spacecraft will fly about 150 metres behind the first, pointing a camera towards it. From this vantage point, the Occulter’s disc will block out the surface of the sun, just as the moon appears to cover the sun during a total solar eclipse. This will allow the imaging craft to view the solar corona, the sun’s atmosphere, in unprecedented detail.

“It will be the closest to the sun we have observed the corona in visible light,” says Damien Galano, the mission manager for Proba-3 at ESA. “This can give us some specific information about the temperature of the corona, the creation of solar wind and how the corona expands into space.”