European satellites team up to create never-before-seen views of the sun
Two high-tech satellites just started their space dance to make artificial solar eclipses. This ground-breaking ESA mission opens new ways to peek at suns outer atmosphere
The European Space Agency made a huge step forward with its long-awaited Proba-3 mission: launching two smart-satellites that work as a team (which took off from India last thursday)
These space-crafts are part of a ten-year-old project thats finally becoming real - they do something pretty cool: make fake solar eclipses happen. The satellites fly in a super-precise formation; one blocks the suns bright center while the other watches whats happening around it
The mission creates a six-hour window to look at the suns outer atmosphere - something scientists couldnt do before because the bright sunlight always got in the way. This new tech lets researchers study the corona (the suns outer layer) without waiting for natural eclipses: which makes it a real game-changer for solar physics
Each satellite knows exactly where it needs to be - one acts like the moon in a natural eclipse while its partner takes pictures and data. Its like a carefully planned dance in space that helps us learn more about our closest star
