The prob-3 mission reveals its first rays of sun-Liberation

Given the heat wave announced in the coming days, and if we asked to Probation to make us a parasol? Because the new mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) has made a specialty to be placed between the earth and the sun … It is based on the synchronized movements of a satellite duo, one of which masks the surface of the sun with a large round in shape, while the other, placed in the alignment, serves as a telescope and photography the solar crown – its atmosphere.

Launched at the end of 2024, the probation-3 mission spent several months on the right orbit and then being calibrated remotely by its scientific team. And, this Monday, June 16, since the International aeronautical and space fair Which is currently being held at Le Bourget, ESA has unveiled its very first images.

« I was absolutely delighted to see the images, especially since we obtained them from the first attempt »commented Andrei Zhukov, scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium and responsible for the optical instrument on board the satellite. A little blurred for these first tests, the images were refined with an algorithm to distinguish the filaments of burning gas (more than a million degrees) which surround the sun.

Prob-3 takes up the old principle of coronography, an astronomical observation method which consists in hiding the sun to observe its atmosphere. It has passed almost a hundred years since the use of the first coronograph in The Pic du Midi Observatorybut we had never tried this technique yet from space, with a couple of finely aligned satellites.

Prob-3 is therefore first of all a technological demonstrator, with a modest budget (200 million euros). But it will also have the advantage of offering beaches of six hours of continuous observation of the sun to each of the orbits around the earth, to provide a lot of data to astronomers specializing in our star.