For the first time in history, two satellites have flown in a perfect formation to create an artificial solar eclipse in the Earth’s orbit, offering images of the Crown of the Sun with a detail that is not possible to capture during natural eclipses.
The images of an artificial eclipse. The European Space Agency (ESA) has just made public the first photos of the PROBA-3 mission, the culmination of a project of more than a decade that validates new precision flight technologies.
The great proba-3 advantage is that it can generate these artificial eclipses for six hours in each orbit of 19.6 hours. A natural solar eclipse, on the other hand, occurs at most times a year and lasts just a few minutes. This continuous observation capacity opens a window to solve some mysteries of our star.
The role of Spain in Proba-3. The mission of 200 million euros has the participation of 29 companies in 14 different countries, of which Spain has a leading role. Spain contributed 40% of the budget and key technologies through Sener, GMV (head of the software and the algorithms of the flight in training) and Airbus Defense and Space in Spain.
Of synchronized satellites. The mission consists of two spacecraft: the hidden and the coronographer. In March, they achieved for the first time what no mission had achieved before: fly autonomously at an exact distance of 150 meters from each other, maintaining that formation with a millimeter accuracy for hours.
To put it in perspective, it is as if two cars on a highway maintained a fixed distance between them with the accuracy of the thickness of a nail, but in an elliptical orbit that moves up to 60,000 km from the earth. And while they fly in this perfect formation, they align with the sun.
What we are seeing in these photos. To get these images, the hidden, which carries a 1.4 meters in diameter, blocks the direct light of the sun, projecting a shadow of just 8 centimeters on the optical instrument of the second satellite, the coronographer.
When the opening of 5 cm of its telescope (called Aspiics) is covered by that tiny shadow, it can photograph the solar crown without being dazzled, something similar to what happens during a total natural eclipse, but being able to capture the activity of the atmosphere of the Sun for hours.
What do we want eclipses to the letter. To try to solve two of the great mysteries of the Sun. First, why the Crown of the Sun (which reaches temperatures of one million Celsius degrees) is much hotter than its surface (which is at 5,500 ° C). This thermal investment is one of the largest puzzles of astrophysics and proba-3, being able to observe so close to the solar limbo and with such little parasitic light, will provide key data to solve it.
The second is how the solar storms that threaten our technology are created. The crown is the cradle of solar wind and coronal mass ejections, massive particle explosions that the sun throws into space. These events are responsible for the auroras, but they can also wreak havoc on satellites, transformers and other electrical devices on Earth.
A resounding success. The success of PROBA-3 not only lies in scientific images, but in the demonstration that the flight in high precision training is possible. This opens the door to future missions with giant virtual telescopes, formed by multiple spacecraft that act as one. The next step is to achieve total autonomy, where the system will work with such confidence that it will not even need routine supervision from the earth.
Images | THAT
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