Europe says farewell to eclipse-making Proba-3

ESA’s solar eclipse-making Proba-3 mission is about to leave Europe, to head to its launch site in India. The mission’s two spacecraft – which will manoeuvre precisely in Earth orbit so that one casts a shadow onto the other – have departed the facilities of Redwire Space in Kruibeke, Belgium. The pair will be flown to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, near Chennai, for the launch campaign to begin.

This ambitious ESA mission has been many years in the making, because it is seeking to do something in space that has previously been impossible, explains ESA mission manager Damien Galano.

Proba-3 Occulter and Coronagraph spacecraft

Once in orbit, Proba-3’s two satellites will enable sustained views of the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, or corona, that has previously only been visible for a few brief moments during terrestrial solar eclipses. To achieve this the shadow being cast between the spacecraft must remain in precise position, which means they must fly autonomously in formation to an accuracy of a single millimetre – about the thickness of an average fingernail.

It has taken a lot of work by ESA and our industrial and academic partners to reach this point of flight readiness. There’s a little sadness to finally say goodbye to these unique satellites, but we’re also very excited to be progressing to the final stage before launch.

Proba-3 satellites form artificial eclipse

Proba-3 is now due to be flown to India on Saturday 2 November, for a new launch date of 4 December.

This is the first time that an ESA mission is being launched from India since the original Proba-1 Earth-observing mission in 2001, and the planned transport process was hit by a delay. The spacecraft were initially not accepted by the air freight company since their batteries were already installed aboard them. This was solved by removing the batteries to be shipped in a separate box.

Proba-3 stack on the way to orbit

The two Proba-3 spacecraft will be launched together by the PSLV-XL launcher of the Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO, which possesses the necessary power at a workable cost to place the 550-kg combined pair into their highly elliptical (or elongated) orbit which will ascend to 60 000 km away from Earth before coming as low as just 600 km.

This high orbit is required because the pair will perform their active formation flying for a planned six hours at a time around their maximum altitude, where Earth’s gravitational pull will be diminished, as will the amount of propellant needed to fine-tune their positions.

Proba-3 laser link between spacecraft

An industrial grouping from 14 ESA Member States including Canada contributed to the mission, led for ESA by Sener in Spain, with Airbus Defence and Space in Spain contributing the satellite platforms and Redwire Space in Belgium responsible for the mission avionics, pre-launch testing and post-launch operations.

GMV in Spain and Poland – focused on formation flying, relative satnav and flight dynamics – plus software-providing Spacebel in Belgium complete the core industrial team.

The two Proba-3 satellites line up with the Sun to form an eclipse

Proba-3’s main corona-observing ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun) instrument, hosted on the Coronagraph spacecraft, will be overseen by the Royal Observatory of Belgium.

The mission’s Occulter spacecraft, fitted with a 1.4-m disk, is tasked with blocking out of the Sun for the Coronagraph spacecraft during active formation flying. It carries its own instrument on the Sunward side, DARA (Davos Absolute Radiometer) to measure the Sun’s total energy output for climate studies, developed by the Physical Meteorological Observatory. PMOD, in Davos, Switzerland.

A third instrument led by Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain, the 3D Energetic Electron Spectrometer, will measure prevailing angle-resolved electron spectra energies in Earth’s surrounding radiation belts, providing valuable data for space weather modelling.

Satellite dishes at ESEC Redu

Mission control for Proba-3 will take place from ESA’s ESEC European Space Security and Education Centre, in Redu, Belgium, which is currently undertaking an extensive pre-launch simulation and training campaign.

Source: ESA