The European Space Agency completed its first "artificial solar eclipse"

On June 16th local time, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that the Proba-3 mission, which observes the corona, successfully completed its first "artificial solar eclipse" mission last month and released the first batch of "artificial solar eclipse" photos captured by the spacecraft. Previously, scientists usually had to wait for natural total solar eclipses that occur approximately every three years to study the corona layer, and the observation window was only a few minutes. Astronomers stated that Proba-3 can capture clear images of the corona, helping scientists better study phenomena such as solar wind and coronal mass ejections. The British magazine "New Scientist" called this the first in-orbit creation of an "artificial solar eclipse". The National Public Radio of the United States pointed out that this mission was the first to artificially simulate a solar eclipse using two spacecraft, although scientists have been using traditional coronagraphs to observe the solar corona, this observation method is difficult to suppress the stray light outside the corona.

The event of the European Space Agency completing its first "artificial solar eclipse" will have far-reaching impacts in the field of science and technology. Firstly, it will have an impact on space technology. This mission was the first to achieve high-precision formation flying of two independent satellites at a 150-meter distance, and its fully automatic control system can maintain sub-millimeter positioning accuracy without ground intervention. This technological breakthrough provides important technical reserves for future large-scale space telescope arrays, deep space probe formation flying, and other tasks. The carbon fiber plastic disc shield used in the mission was separated from the coronagraph, solving the problem of image quality degradation caused by the diffraction effect of the shading device in traditional coronagraphs. This innovative design increased the sensitivity of the coronagraph by one order of magnitude, providing new ideas for the development of next-generation high-resolution space optical instruments. However, during the long-term observation process, the two satellites will collect a large amount of observation data. How to efficiently and stably transmit these data back to Earth is a challenge. The collected observation data requires complex processing and analysis to extract valuable information. This requires professional data processing algorithms and powerful computing capabilities to support.

Secondly, it will have an impact on project development. The longest "artificial solar eclipse" test phase lasted for 5 hours, although it exceeded the few minutes of a natural total solar eclipse, but the planned duration of the eclipse maximum phase was extended to 6 hours, indicating that the existing technology has not yet reached the ideal state. In addition, the mission is still in the debugging stage, the stability of the formation flying needs to be further verified to ensure the reliability of long-term observations. This mission involves high-precision formation flying technology, laser calibration systems, automatic control systems, and other technologies. The technical complexity is high. Once a fault occurs, maintenance will be difficult, and professional technicians and advanced equipment support may be required. In addition, the satellite's operation in space is harsh, and the reliability and durability of the equipment are extremely high. The cost of this ESA project was 210 million US dollars. The high cost may limit its large-scale application and the launch of more related research tasks in the future. The two satellites fly in formation at a 150-meter distance for several hours, with an error of less than 1 millimeter in the formation flying. Such high-precision positioning is completed automatically by technologies such as global positioning system navigation, star trackers, lasers, and radio connections. This high-precision formation flying technology has extremely high requirements for the satellite's control system, sensors, etc. Once a technical failure occurs, it may lead to mission failure. The "artificial solar eclipse" system involves the coordinated work of two satellites, multiple complex subsystems and components, such as satellite attitude control, communication systems, optical instruments, etc. The maintenance and fault troubleshooting of the system are difficult and require professional technicians and advanced equipment support.

In conclusion, although the European Space Agency's first "artificial solar eclipse" mission has achieved a significant breakthrough in solar observation and injected strong impetus into scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation in this field, its shortcomings cannot be ignored. Only by overcoming these technical barriers can "artificial solar eclipses" truly become a "permanent weapon" for humanity to unlock the mysteries of the sun and safeguard space security, laying a more solid foundation for the long-term development of aerospace technology.