Jakarta –
A Total Solar Eclipse is a very rare and precious event. After the spectacular event in North America on April 8, similar events throughout the world will only occur again at the end of 2026, and the United States will only experience a similar event at the end of 2044.
However, scientists from the European Space Agency (ESA) do not want to wait any longer. They have found a way to make their own eclipses and can even be made almost every day on request.
The trick is, they won’t wait for the Moon to be in the right place, but will use a spacecraft with a circular shield to cast a shadow over a special sensor on the second craft.
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By blocking out the main part of the Sun as in a lunar eclipse, researchers can study the surrounding atmosphere, called the Sun’s corona, which is usually drowned out by the star’s glare.
A million degrees hotter than the surface of the Sun beneath it, the corona is important to humans because it is the source of the solar wind, space weather, and powerful eruptions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that have the power to disrupt communications, electronics, and electricity. on earth.
Artistic visuals of Proba-3 in operation and inset, a total solar eclipse. Precision-flying satellites will allow scientists to study the Sun’s corona at any time, creating their own eclipses. Photo: ESA
The process of creating an eclipse
After launching from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India in September and traveling into orbit around the Earth, the two craft will be separated by a distance of about 150 meters.
Then, aligned with the Sun via spaceflight with incredible precision, a satellite called the Occulter will cast its shadow onto the surface of the Coronagraph satellite, allowing it to measure the Sun’s atmosphere at a distance of 1.1-3 solar radii from the star.
“The two spacecraft will act as if they were one giant instrument 150 meters long,” said ESA Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, Dietmar Pilz, quoted by Newsweek.
“However, achieving this would be very technically challenging, because the slightest misalignment and it would not work. The development process was a long one, carried out by a consortium of smaller ESA member states led by Spain and Belgium. So I am very “it’s great to see Proba-3 here today, getting ready to launch,” he explained.
Ground-based and space telescopes can be equipped with occult disks that replace the Moon, blocking the Sun to mimic the effects of an eclipse. However, this technique is limited by diffraction, a phenomenon that causes light to leak to the edges of the disk, distorting the resulting image of the Sun’s crown.
The solution to this is to keep occult discs away from recording instruments. By using two spacecraft, greater separation (and thus better images) becomes practical.
Another advantage of creating an artificial eclipse in space is that, through careful maneuvering of the two satellites, the eclipse can be made to last longer than a natural eclipse.
A previous artificial eclipse was produced by the US Apollo spacecraft during the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975. Now, a new team will create such an event any day now. See fact box. Photo: ESA
The April 8 Total Solar Eclipse lasted about four and a half minutes at most for observers in the US. In contrast, the Proba-3 will be able to make events last up to six hours at a time. This will happen automatically every 19 hours 36 minutes, when the plane reaches the top of its highly elliptical orbit, which reaches a distance of 60,527 km from the Earth’s surface.
At this distance, ESA explains, atmospheric, gravitational and magnetic disturbances from our Earth can be minimized, allowing clearer measurements of the Sun’s corona. ESA launched both Proba-3 craft this week at the Redwire Space Facility in Kruibeke, Belgium, where they are currently undergoing pre-flight testing.
Occulter spacecraft and Proba-3 Coronagraph. Both will create an eclipse that will last for six hours. Photo: ESA
Initially, mission team members planned to take advantage of the April 8 total solar eclipse in the US to test hardware designed for the spacecraft, specifically a polarization filter wheel intended for use in the Coronagraph satellite, along with alternative LED technology. However, the plan was canceled.
However, there were many experiments carried out during the April 8 eclipse event, including NASA’s efforts to ‘chase’ the eclipse with jet aircraft, and investigating its effect on the upper atmosphere using special rockets.
Artistic visual of the Apollo Test Project – Soyuz. During this mission, the Apollo spacecraft maneuvered in such a way that it created an eclipse for the cosmonauts on the Soyuz to photograph. Photo: ESA
“The Proba-3 mission is expected to last two years, or perhaps longer, if the fuel required for the formation flight does not run out by the end of this period,” Zhukov explained.
In addition to providing a new view of the Sun’s corona, the Proba-3 mission will also be a proof of concept for a new level of precision formation flight down to millimeter-level accuracy thanks to a combination of positioning technologies.
This will include satellite navigation, radio-based links, visible light cameras that sharpen the position of LEDs, even laser beams that bounce back and forth between the two aircraft.
According to ESA, demonstrating precise spaceflight will enable a new era for science and applications. “Missions much larger than any spacecraft can be flown, such as giant in-orbit radio and optical interferometry arrays,” ESA said.
At the same time, the agency said, proper orbital rendezvous will make in-orbit satellite servicing possible, thereby extending the life of space infrastructure.
Watch the video “5 interesting facts about the 2024 total solar eclipse”
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2024-04-12 22:45:16
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