Dream of astrophysicians and heliophysicals who study the so -called solar crown, solar eclipses produced on demand are already a reality in the terrestrial orbit. The “magic” will be made by two spaces of the European space agency (ESA).
Launched aboard a powerful Indian space agency rocket, the proba-3 twin platforms will fly together as if they were one, “Maintaining a precise training of a single millimeter”says ESA on its website.
This very high degree of control has a specific goal: to produce artificial solar eclipses while orbiting the earth, allowing scientists to make prolonged observations (up to six hours at a time) of the solar crown.
For now, the pair will remain united during the so -called initial commissioning, supervised by controlling the mission at the European Center for Space Safety and Education, in Redi, Belgium.
At some point in early 2025, satellites will separate and fly on average at 150 meters from each other, when they reach their destination, and align with the sun so that the occult must shade the coronagraph.
Why are eclipses so important to observe the solar crown?
Solar eclipses are considered due to a single observation condition. For incredible astronomical coincidence, the moon and the sun are approximately the same apparent size in the earth’s sky.
An almost perfect mathematical proportion (the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, and is 400 times farther from Earth) the two celestial bodies look exactly the same size when observed from the earth’s surface. This “fitting” causes, during a total eclipse, the moon completely blocks the intense shine of the solar disk, allowing instruments and telescopes to capture solar crown details that are usually invisible.
Under normal conditions, the brightness of the solar disk is so intense that it completely masks visually delicate and structurally thin training of the solar crown which, during the eclipse, proves to be luminous and different. At this very moment, which lasts a maximum of seven minutes, scientists examine the unique characteristics of the solar crown: its plasma structures, magnetic field lines and other phenomena linked to the dynamic behavior of plasma and solar magnetic field.
The importance of artificial solar eclipses
Prior to the invention of coronographers (direct light blockers of the solar disk in telescopes) and some specialized satellites, solar eclipses were practically the only opportunity to study directly the sun’s outer atmosphere., Solar eclipses, which occur two to five times Per year (but not always total), they become very crowded scientific events in the world.
Therefore, trying to reproduce the ideal conditions of the moon, which, about 384,400 kilometers from Earth, can completely cover the solar disk, became an obsession for space agencies. However, “today it is not practical to orbit a single 150 m long space vehicle,” jokes ESA’s director general Josef Aschbacher on the European space agency website.
But now proba-3 can achieve this same performance using only two incredibly synchronized small space vehicles. The result will create new ways of working in space, says the space engineer.
When the proba-3 ships are on the highest part of their orbits, about 60,500 kilometers from the earth’s surface, the occulter will launch a precisely controlled shadow in the coronagraph observation satellite, 150 m away.
The result will be the production of solar eclipses on demand. “The best way to prove that this new European technology works as expected It is generating scientific data that no one has ever seen before”, afirma Aschbacher.
