Proba-3 stargazing to warm up for corona observations

To take images of solar corona, prob -3 borres aspicics, which is smaller to the association of the spacecraft for the corona of the sun’s polemetric and imaging tests. The device developed by the center spatial de lease, ESA by Belgium is made up of a large psychic disc on a solar corongraph system performed by Occular Space Strait and Korongraph spacecraft.

In their most accurate formation, Korongraph and Occulter will be flying in addition to 150 meters, maintaining their relative position up to one millimeter. The secret disc will cover the bright body of the sun, core a shadow on the optical instrument on the Korongraph spacecraft and allows it to study solar corona.

After his launch on 5 December 2024, the two satellites remained connected until their separation on 14 January 2025. The Mission Control Team at the European Space Security and Education Center of ESA in Belgium managed the initial-orbit commissioning.

While the spacecraft was still connected to each other, the team tested the mission’s accuracy. Essentially, the operators rotated the spacecraft as to which stars it should face. The aspiics images of the Star Field were then used to verify if it was right to indicate.

Andre Jhingov, the chief investigator of the Espiics Korongraph at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, says: “We saw Star Maps to see which stars would appear for prob -3 on that specific date. Choosing a single star would not be enough, because then you cannot sure which star you are looking at. Ideally, you want at least three stars – a triangle can give you complete orientation information in this way.

“We chose two bright stars from the planetarium of the Ophuchs-which means ‘serpent-bearer’ in ancient Greek-which Greek letters are marked with δ (delta) and ε (epsilon). They together with some weak stars The image is sufficiently located to fit.

Andrei then asked the control team to point to those stars to point to the spacecraft and capture an image of the star field using the optical instrument of Korongraph.

“With excellent accuracy, the spacecraft properly indicated where we asked it. When we found images, we saw both the stars directly. They are very fast – this is very good news, because it means that during ten seconds to catch the image, the spacecraft was very stable. ,

At least eight stars are visible in this aspicics image, which is enough to confirm pointing to the binoculars. The position of both spacecraft will be significantly important to see Corona. If their alignment is closed for a few millimeters, the sun will not be completely covered by the author, which disrupts unwanted light observation.

In accurate alignment, the 1.4-meter large disk-Bahari will cover the sun in an accurate alignment. Nevertheless, however, the so -called ‘Awara Prakash’ will spread to the edges of the author, forming a fog that will interfere with the corona comments.

To block stray light, the corongraph is decorated with another, internal oocular. In the Star Field image, this internal oocular appears in the form of a black ring, which corresponds to a black section of one of the lens of the corongraph.

Andrei says: “You can also see cosmic rays in the image marked in the purple. This is normal – in the corerongraph images, the cosmic rays often look like stars. In addition to some time, a second image was taken – in this one, stars live, and cosmic rays appear in different places.

“Overall, we were very happy with the accuracy of the spacecraft and the quality of the image. This made us even more excited to see the corona images, which was expected in early March. ,

Belgian’s Royal Observatory Aspiics is hosting the Science Operations Center (SOC) – a dedicated team responsible for creating operations command for corongraph based on the requests from the scientific community and on the basis of sharing the resulting comments.