By Dean Murray via SWNS
A spaceship that will block out the Sun is being launched Dec. 4.
European Space Agency’s eclipse-making precise formation-flying mission Proba-3 is scheduled for launch on a PSLV-XL rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.
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By blocking out the fiery disc of the Sun, Proba-3’s ‘Occulter’ spacecraft will mimic a terrestrial total solar eclipse, to open up views of the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, or ‘corona’, which is a million times fainter than its parent star.
Proba-3’s second ‘Coronagraph’ spacecraft hosts the optical instrument that will observe the solar corona.
On Earth, total solar eclipses only occur every 18 months on average, and last just for a few minutes. Solar scientists have to travel all over the world to take advantage of them.
Proba-3 will be able to create solar eclipses on demand, observing closer to the edge of the Sun than any previous Earth- or space-based instrument, down to just 1.1 solar radii. And it will do so for six hours per 19-hour 36-minute orbit.
