Astronomers hope the Proba-3 mission will help them get a better view of the corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, which is even hotter than the sun's surface.
In this illustration, the two spacecraft of Proba-3 fly in precise formation about about 500 feet apart to form an external coronagraph in space. One spacecraft eclipses the sun to allow the second to study the invisible solar corona.
"What is interesting about the Proba-3 instrument is that the occulter is actually on a different spacecraft, so it can be quite far away, and using this technique, the instrument can block the sun's disk more precisely," Reeves says. During the Proba-3 mission, one satellite, the Occulter, will line up with the sun and cast a shadow onto the other spacecraft, the Coronagraph. The corona will be visible, just like during an actual eclipse, and the Coronagraph will take a photo of the inner part of the corona, according to the ESA.
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