<ul><li>On December 4, 2024, ESA is set to launch an audacious two-part telescope into space to study the sun’s atmosphere.</li><li>The occulter isn’t attached to the telescope … but will instead be on a separate satellite, 492 feet (150 meters) away.</li><li>The two spacecraft will form the largest coronagraph ever made.</li><li>Proba-3’s mission is to study the inner corona, which is normally visible only during a total solar eclipse.</li><li>The spacecraft won’t always be aligned, because this would require too much fuel. Instead, they’ll use their thrusters to maneuver into position.</li><li>During apogee, the satellites will linup 492 feet apart, so that the outer spacecraft’s 4.6 feet occulting disk creates an artificial solar eclipse for the inner satellite.</li><li>Proba-3 will be in an extremely elliptical orbit of Earth.</li><li>Proba-3 can image the corona up to every 30 seconds.</li><li>Scientists hope this detailed view of the inner corona will provide insight into the development of coronal mass ejections (CMEs).</li><li>One of the main reasons ESA came up with the idea of two-part coronagraph is to avoid diffraction.</li></ul>

Proba-3: A sun-observing telescope made from 2 satellites

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