Solar eclipses have fascinated humanity for many thousands of years, inspiring monuments and mythologies across the globe. And even in our scientific era, the sight of an eclipse is often awe-inspiring.
Now, astronomers at the European Space Agency (ESA) want to induce this event, using tandem satellites to block out the sun and study its elusive outer atmosphere for hours on end.
Set to launch in 2019, ESA’s Proba-3 is the first mission of its kind. In precise formation, a first satellite will orbit just 150 meters (500 feet) further from Earth than the second satellite, and the two will remain within a relative position within just 1 millimeter (0.03 inches) of error.
The first satellite, the “occulter,” will have an umbrella that’s just large enough to block much of the sun when viewed from the second satellite, the “coronagraph.” Since the sun is 1 million times brighter than its corona, this eclipse inducing effect is vital and must be kept close.
“We have two scientific instruments aboard,” Damien Galano, Proba-3 Payload Manager, said in a press release. “The primary payload is ASPICS, a coronagraph to observe the corona in visible light while the DARA radiometer on the occulter measures the total solar irradiance coming from the sun – a scientific parameter about which there is still some uncertainty.”
Although the primary mission is to observe the sun’s corona, the ESA also hopes Proba-3 will prove that two small satellites can do the job of one large satellite, a demonstration that would help lower resources needed for future missions.
“The precise formation flying demonstration mission … will bring a new set of eyes on the sun and a new way of designing space missions,” Franco Ongaro, head of the European Space Research and Technology Centre, said in a promotional video.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.