{"id":3476,"date":"2015-03-22T08:57:53","date_gmt":"2015-03-22T08:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=3476"},"modified":"2015-03-22T08:57:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-22T08:57:53","slug":"astronaut-plus-proba-minisats-snap-solar-eclipse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/astronaut-plus-proba-minisats-snap-solar-eclipse\/","title":{"rendered":"Astronaut plus Proba minisats snap solar eclipse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Space_eclipse_small\"<\/a>As the\u00a0partial solar eclipse crossed Europe on\u00a0March 20, it was also visible from space. ESA\u2019s Proba-2 captured a near-total eclipse from orbit, at the same time as its sister minisatellite Proba-V peered down to snap the shadow of the eclipse on Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti also found time while running an experiment to record the eclipse from the International Space Station, and try to track the eclipse\u2019s \u2018umbra\u2019 on the ground.<\/span><\/p>\n

During a solar eclipse the Moon moves in front of the Sun as seen from Earth. As their apparent size is similar, the Moon temporarily blocks a significant part of the Sun\u2019s light.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Proba-V<\/a>
Proba-V sees eclipse darkening<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The whole of Europe experienced a partial eclipse this time: 100% of the Sun\u2019s disc was obscured over Norway\u2019s Svalbard islands, 97% from the north of Scotland, 84% over London, 81% over The Hague, 75% over Paris, 65% over Madrid and 56% over Rome.<\/span><\/div>\n

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ESA had eclipse-viewing events at Space Expo \u2013 the visitor centre for its ESTEC technical centre, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, as well its ESRIN Earth observation site in Frascati, Italy.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The path of \u2018totality\u2019 \u2013 where the Sun is completely blocked \u2013 traced a small band across the North Atlantic, including the Faroe Islands and Svalbard, the latter home to an ESA ground station, and hosting an eclipse-spotting expedition for the occasion.<\/span><\/div>\n
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ESA\u2019s Proba family<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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ESA\u2019s Proba family<\/b>ESA\u2019s Proba missions are among the smallest satellites ever flown by ESA, each one smaller than a cubic metre. They are technology demonstrators with important science goals.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\"Proba-V\"<\/a>
Proba-V<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Proba-2, launched in 2009, monitors the Sun and space weather. One instrument images the high-temperature surface of the Sun and its surrounding corona at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, while another tracks overall solar radiation levels.Proba-V, launched in 2013, has the wide-swath Vegetation camera as its main instrument, acquiring images of all of Earth\u2019s green land every two days.The Proba series began with the Proba-1 hyperspectral imaging mission, launched in 2001 and still operational.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Eclipse-making Proba-3<\/b>ESA\u2019s forthcoming Proba-3 mission is focused on solar eclipses \u2013 not to image them, but actually to create them, between a pair of minisatellites in orbit.Two satellites will be launched together then separate to fly in tandem, going on to experiment with high-precision formation-flying techniques.<\/span><\/p>\n
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\"Proba-3_small\"<\/a>As has become traditional with Proba missions, the success of Proba-3\u2019s technology will be proven through acquiring high-quality scientific data. In this case, the \u2018occulter\u2019 satellite will blot out the Sun\u2019s fiery disc as viewed by the \u2018coronagraph\u2019 satellite, revealing mysterious regions of our parent star\u2019s ghostly \u2018corona\u2019, or outer atmosphere.The Sun is a million times brighter than its surrounding corona, so eclipsing it in this way is essential to study the inner corona.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Achieving such a sustained artificial eclipse is a formidable technical challenge, however. The satellites will have to fly 150 m apart, maintaining their separation with millimetre-scale and fraction-of-a-degree precision.Proba-3 is due to be launched in late 2018.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the\u00a0partial solar eclipse crossed Europe on\u00a0March 20, it was also visible from space. ESA\u2019s Proba-2 captured a near-total eclipse from orbit, at the same time as its sister minisatellite Proba-V peered down to snap the shadow of the eclipse on Earth. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti also found time while running an experiment to record […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small-150x96.jpg",150,96,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",95,54,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",170,96,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Proba-3_small.jpg",150,85,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}