This April, millions of tourists from around the world plan to visit one of several dozen cities in the United States to witness a total solar eclipse – but in the meantime, the European Space Agency is preparing an amazing astronomical event of its own: this September, it will try to create an artificial "solar eclipse" for the first time using a satellite to obscure the sun. About the reason and the way to do this is told with the help of Claude.
The Proba-3 mission, which will take off in September, will include two satellites specifically designed to align in an orbit that will create an artificial solar eclipse – that is, one in which one satellite covers the sun from the perspective of the other satellite.
The pair of compact satellites are designed to fly in parallel orbits at a distance of about 144 meters from each other. They will orbit the Earth, with one of them occasionally passing over the other in a way that will create for the many sensors of the other sensor the effect of a total solar eclipse, lasting up to 6 hours at a time. This effect will allow the satellite far from the Sun to take unprecedented quality and long-term images and measurements of the Sun's incredibly faint outer atmosphere, known in English as Corona.
This will help scientists study the pattern of activity of this outer layer of the sun and predict solar storms, which until now we could only predict the beginning of and predict the consequences, which often include disruptions of communications equipment on Earth – but we had no way of predicting them. Studying the activity patterns of the coronavirus for many hours, instead of a few minutes of a real solar eclipse, will make it possible to speed up the study of so-called "space weather," caused by radiation bursts from the sun.
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