The European Space Agency will soon launch the Proba-3 robot, which will help create total solar eclipses on demand.
What if humans took control of solar eclipses? This is what the European Space Agency (ESA) seems to want to achieve, with its future mission which has been designed to create total solar eclipses on demand.
ESA will soon launch the Proba-3 robot on a mission to fly a pair of satellites in close formation around Earth, linked by lasers and light sensors, with the one of the probes blocking the view of the Sun from the other craft.
With this technology, the ESA will have the ability to create solar eclipses that last several hours.
“A promising technology”
Observing these eclipses will revolutionize the study of the sun and understanding of how it can disrupt power lines, GPS satellites and other Earth-based technologies, says the European Space Agency.
The latter also believes that this mission with the Proba-3 robot will be a pioneer in the context of other training space flights that could transform studies of gravitational waves, exoplanets and black holes.
“This is an extraordinarily promising technology,” said solar physicist Francisco Diego of University College London, who noted that the mission has been planned for almost a decade.
