Produced by: Manoj Kumar
On December 5, ESA’s Proba-3 mission, a collaboration of 14 nations and Canada, blasted off aboard India’s PSLV-XL rocket to showcase cutting-edge precision in satellite formation flying.
Launching from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre, the satellites separated 18 minutes post-liftoff, entering a highly elliptical orbit reaching up to 60,500 km—thanks to ISRO’s powerful PSLV-XL rocket.
The Occulter spacecraft will cast a perfectly aligned shadow onto the Coronagraph 150 m away, creating artificial solar eclipses for up to six hours, enabling never-before-seen solar corona observations.
Proba-3 aims to close a crucial observation gap between 1.1 and 3 solar radii, allowing scientists to trace colossal Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and study the solar wind’s outward acceleration.
In a feat of engineering, Proba-3’s twin satellites will maintain alignment with millimeter-level accuracy—comparable to the width of a fingernail—while flying 150 meters apart, as ESA’s Joe Zender explains.
ESA’s mission is a breakthrough in autonomous formation flying, proving that two small spacecraft can work together like a single 150-m long telescope to advance future space exploration.
ESA Director Dietmar Pilz praised Proba-3’s years-in-the-making effort, highlighting its success in demonstrating Europe’s prowess in developing next-gen space technologies through precision operations.
Principal Investigator Andrei Zhukov from Belgium’s Royal Observatory notes Proba-3’s role in uncovering the faint solar corona’s secrets—a region critical to
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher envisions small satellite formations as the future of space missions, enabling virtual telescopes, vast arrays, and modular spacecraft collaborations for scientific breakthroughs.