The ISRO had another reason to cheer late Thursday as it successfully launched its Proba-3 spacecraft from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The launch, carried out using the PSLV-C59 rocket, occurred at 4:04 PM after a short break because of a propulsion system failure on December 4. The mission was a remarkable step forward in precision formation flying and heliophysics investigation.
Proba-3 is a path-breaking initiative successfully carried out in the field of space missions by ISRO and ESA. It has two structures, the Coronagraph and the Occulter, which are supposed to have a working separation of 150 meters. This configuration shall facilitate the Occulter to generate an artificial eclipse on the centre of the Sun, and with the Coronagraph, it will be possible to view the outermost layer of the solar corona, usually referred to as the outer corona, which is invoked in CMEs and space weather.
The PSLV-C59 was able to inject the spacecraft into an elongated orbit that is with a perigee of 600 km, the closest distance that the spacecraft can reach the Earth, and an apogee of 60000 km, the farthest distance that the spacecraft would be from the earth. The spacecraft was built with a payload capacity of 550 kg, and it was the first spacecraft to manoeuvre into formation flight during the mission with a level of precision accuracy reaching millimetres.
The ISRO Chairman, S. Somanath also joined the team to congratulate the scientists and engineers who contributed to the development of the mission. He said, “I must aver that the PSLV-C59 Proba-3 launch has been achieved.” The spacecraft is now in the right orbit, and all subsystems are working perfectly well. It is a big advancement in heliophysics and for the Indian space program.”
Proba stands for “Project for Onboard Autonomy,” though linguistically, it means “let’s try” in Latin, which seemed particularly appropriate for this experiment. The mission demonstrates India’s increasing capabilities in Hi-Tech space science and also reaffirms its place in global space science.
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