{"id":188906,"date":"2024-12-05T10:55:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T10:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/05\/a-spacecraft-duo-will-fly-in-formation-to-create-artificial-solar-eclipses\/"},"modified":"2024-12-05T10:55:53","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T10:55:53","slug":"a-spacecraft-duo-will-fly-in-formation-to-create-artificial-solar-eclipses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/05\/a-spacecraft-duo-will-fly-in-formation-to-create-artificial-solar-eclipses\/","title":{"rendered":"A spacecraft duo will fly in formation to create artificial solar eclipses"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/120324_lg_proba3_feat.jpg?fit=800%2C450&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"A spacecraft duo will fly in formation to create artificial solar eclipses\" title=\"A spacecraft duo will fly in formation to create artificial solar eclipses\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>A pair of spacecraft just launched to create hundreds of artificial solar eclipses in orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The European Space Agency mission, called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Enabling_Support\/Space_Engineering_Technology\/Proba-3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Proba-3<\/a>, will allow scientists \u201cto see an eclipse on demand,\u201d as one satellite blocks the other\u2019s view of the sun, says mission scientist and solar physicist Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That, in turn, will allow researchers to readily study the middle part of the corona, the uppermost region of the sun\u2019s atmosphere. Scientists suspect that many of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/collections\/eclipse-2017\">sun\u2019s most enduring mysteries<\/a>, from how the solar wind is accelerated to why the corona is so much hotter than the surface of the sun, may have solutions in this elusive region. \u201cIt\u2019s really a game changer,\u201d Zhukov says.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-wrapper {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  background-image: url(\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/cta_background_aurora.jpg\");\n  background-size: cover;\n  background-position: center center;\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  padding: 20px;\n  background:rgba(0,0,0, 0.5);\n  color: white;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion h2 {\n  color: white;\n}\n\np.has-text-align-center a {\n  color: white !important;\n  text-decoration: none;\n  font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"dynamic-wrapper\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div id=\"dynamic-conversion\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\"><strong>Have feedback for Science News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Help us improve by telling us about your experience<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>The mission \u2014 launched from India on December 5 at 5:34 a.m. EST \u2014 consists of two satellites that will fly together in lockstep, as if they were a single rigid structure in space. While in formation, the satellites will stay 144 meters apart to an accuracy of one millimeter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One satellite will, when directed, block the sun from the perspective of the other, emulating a total solar eclipse. The observing spacecraft will then send back high-resolution images of the innermost part of the sun\u2019s diaphanous atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Normally, scientists can use satellites to observe the corona right at the surface of the sun in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of light. Scientists can also build an artificial eclipse into a telescope by putting a disk called a coronograph in front of the lens. But light waves bend around the sharp-edge disk in a process called diffraction, ruining the image. So the coronograph must block out a considerable area around the sun, limiting how close such observations can get to the star itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The in-between region, at distances from the surface of about one to three times the sun\u2019s roughly 700,000-kilometer radius, can be observed only during a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/totality-scientists-studied-planets-reactions-solar-eclipse\">total solar eclipse<\/a> <em>(SN: 4\/8\/24)<\/em>. \u201cBut they are too rare,\u201d Zhukov says. The alignment of sun, moon and Earth happens roughly once per year, can be viewed only from specific spots on the planet and lasts just a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Proba-3 will create eclipses on demand that will last six hours. That long duration will let scientists see how the corona moves and changes over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the large distance between the two spacecraft means diffraction is less of an issue. The farther away the occulter is, the more diffracted light can spread out before reaching the observer. It\u2019s basically casting a sharper shadow, says physicist Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe cool thing about Proba-3 is they\u2019re going to put the occulter much farther away than what you could reasonably do with a single spacecraft,\u201d Caspi says. \u201cThat means that you can make the occulter exactly the right size, and you can see closer down to the solar surface.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Staying in eclipse formation all the time would use too much fuel, so the satellites will spend most of their time flying freely. But scientists still expect more than 1,000 eclipses over the full two-year mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Precision formation-flying satellites will be useful for future missions, too. Such a setup could, for example, link several telescopes together to act as one, effectively creating a telescope much wider than anything that can be launched from Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Caspi thinks the observations from Proba-3, in combination with other spacecraft, will set the stage for the next decade of solar science.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-elements-27c40654034fbeecef6418d6adfe0794\" style=\"color:gray; margin-bottom:0px; font-size:.9rem;\">Sponsor Message<\/p>\n<!-- Tag ID: sciencenews-org_leaderboard_incontent -->\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a very creative use of formation flying in space to achieve something that would be almost impossible, if not actually impossible, to do with a single spacecraft,\u201d Caspi says. \u201cIt opens up this new discovery space of observations that have been inaccessible until now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/artificial-solar-eclipse-satellites\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A pair of spacecraft just launched to create hundreds of artificial solar eclipses in orbit. The European Space Agency mission, called Proba-3, will allow scientists \u201cto see an eclipse on demand,\u201d as one satellite blocks the other\u2019s view of the sun, says mission scientist and solar physicist Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/120324_lg_proba3_feat.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[5758,3816,24704,24716,4321,10103,362,33519],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188908,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188906\/revisions\/188908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}