ESA’s Formation Flying Mission Proba-3 Ready to Travel to the Sun with SPACEBEL Technology

This ambitious ESA mission has required many years of hard work given its aim to achieve something in Space that was previously considered impossible. SPACEBEL is one of the industrial core team members of the Proba-3 consortium under the leadership of Sener (Spain), prime contractor, to highly contribute to this innovative Space mission.

The Proba-3 Mission
First precision formation flying mission of the European Space Agency meant to study the outer atmosphere of the Sun, Proba-3 (Project for On-Board Autonomy) is Europe’s fourth technology demonstrator designed to test new Space technologies destined for future ESA missions.

As a matter of fact, Proba-3 will be extremely challenging as it comprises two elements flying together at a distance of 150 m while behaving like one single spacecraft in a highly elliptical orbit at some 60.000 km from Earth. Both satellites will have to be in very precise locations in relation to each other to form one virtual solar observatory. The satellite equipped with a round 140 cm diameter disk will act as an occulter to create an artificial solar eclipse on a sustained basis whereas the other one – the coronograph – will study the halo around the Sun for up to 6 hours per orbit.

Apart from demonstrating new Space technologies and experiments for future ESA missions – in particular precision formation flying – Proba-3 also has a scientific objective: observe during two years the solar corona. This hottest layer of the solar atmosphere with temperatures rising up to millions of degrees is the source of solar winds and storms, well-known as space weather phenomena which can affect systems and infrastructure in orbit and on Earth. Studying the corona is quite complex as it is visible only for a few moments on Earth during rare total eclipses. Proba-3 has been designed to tackle this problem by artificially mimicking an eclipse while reducing diffraction issues – a phenomenon that is common to other solar observation missions – and improving overall visibility of the Sun’s surroundings.