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Mahesh

03/04/23 21:26 PM IST

Europe's Proba-3

In News
  • The two spacecraft forming the European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission are ready with instruments and sensors allowing them to maneuver to a millimeter-scale precision relative to one another.
About Proba- 3 mission
  • Proba-3 is an ambitious mission that aims to form a 144-m long solar coronagraph, allowing scientists to study the Sun’s faint corona closer to the solar rim than has ever before been achieved.
  • Achieving precise formation flying opens up a whole new era for science and applications, including Earth observation and in-orbit satellite servicing.
  • Proba-3’s spacecrafts will be deployed by India’s PSLV in a high Earth orbit.
  • The spacecrafts will maintain formation to a few millimetres and arc second precision at distances of 144 m or more for six hours at a time, achieved autonomously without relying on guidance from the ground.
  • The two probes will together form a 144-m long solar coronagraph to study the Sun’s faint corona closer to the solar rim than has ever before been achieved.
  • This will open up continuous views of the Sun’s faint corona, or surrounding atmosphere, for scientific observation.
Objectives
  • Proba-3’s primary goal is to validate strategies, guidance, navigation and control, and other algorithms in space.
  • Maintaining formation throughout the orbit is difficult due to high fuel costs.
  • Therefore, each orbit will be divided between 6 hours of formation flying manoeuvres at apogee and the rest of the orbit in passive safe drifting.
  • Proba-3 will function as an orbital laboratory, demonstrating acquisition, proximity, operation, formation flying, separation from 25 meters to 250 meters apart, while validating innovative meteorology sensors, and control algorithms, opening up novel methods of mission control.
Source- India Today

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