[ad_1]\n<\/p>\n
The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to create its own solar eclipses so that researchers can study one of the more difficult-to-observe parts of the Sun\u2019s anatomy: its blazing-hot corona. To do that, it hopes to fly two separate spacecraft, 150 meters apart and aligned so that one satellite (called the \u201cocculter\u201d) blocks all but the corona from the other satellite, which will observe it using an instrument called a coronagraph. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The mission\u2019s two craft will have to fly \u201cin precise formation down to millimetre accuracy,\u201d using satellite navigation, radio-based satellite interlinks, cameras, and a laser beam reflected between them. ESA technology director Dietmar Pilz said in a statement that getting the two to \u201cact as if they are one enormous 150-m long instrument\u201d will be an \u201cextremely technical\u201d challenge. The ESA says it\u2019s targeting six-hour eclipse observations for each of the crafts\u2019 19-hour, 36-minute orbits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
One reason scientists are so eager to study the Sun\u2019s corona is its role in our solar system\u2019s weather. Aside from being mysteriously hotter than the Sun\u2019s surface, it contributes to solar wind, and its coronal mass ejections have potential effects on Earth, ranging from the dancing lights of the planet\u2019s auroras to widespread electrical outages (recall every headline you\u2019ve seen predicting a solar storm-induced internet apocalypse). The ESA says one of the goals of the mission, known as Proba-3, is to measure the Sun\u2019s total energy output to inform climate modeling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are coronagraphs on Earth and in space, but the ESA says they\u2019re limited in what they can accomplish because the light has a tendency to diffract or spill over the edge of the light-blocking disk. Putting the occluding disk farther away helps, but building that into a single spacecraft isn\u2019t practical. The ESA says in its release that NASA attempted to pull something similar off by using an Apollo capsule to block out the Sun for a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in 1975.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The agency hopes to launch the Proba-3 mission in September. Its release today comes as much of the US is getting ready to watch on April 8th as the ultimate occulter \u2014 the Moon \u2014 traverses the Sun and creates a total eclipse that will swing from South Texas to Maine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing to create its own solar eclipses so that researchers can study one of the more difficult-to-observe parts of the Sun\u2019s anatomy: its blazing-hot corona. To do that, it hopes to fly two separate spacecraft, 150 meters apart and aligned so that one satellite (called the \u201cocculter\u201d) blocks …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}