![\"Image](\"https:\/\/d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net\/img\/q60\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Proba-3_Occulter_eclipsing_Sun_for_Coronagraph_spacecraft_article1.jpg\")
From the European Space Agency today<\/a>, “Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse”:<\/p>\n This March, Proba-3 achieved what no other mission has before \u2013 its two spacecraft, the Coronagraph and the Occulter,\u00a0flew 150 metres apart in perfect formation<\/a>\u00a0for several hours without any control from the ground.<\/p>\n While aligned, the pair maintain their relative position down to a single millimetre \u2013 an extraordinary feat enabled by\u00a0a set of innovative navigation and positioning technologies<\/a>.<\/p>\n Demonstrating the degree of precision achieved, the two spacecraft use their formation flying time to create artificial total solar eclipses in orbit \u2013 they align with the Sun so that the 1.4 m large disc carried by the Occulter spacecraft covers the bright disc of the Sun for the Coronagraph spacecraft, casting a shadow of 8 cm across onto its optical instrument,\u00a0ASPIICS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And here’s the actual corona, with the full occulting:<\/p>\n The post That's No Moon<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (Image from European Space Agency.) From the European Space Agency today, “Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse”: This March, Proba-3 achieved…\n
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\nThe post That's No Moon appeared first on Reason.com. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117210"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}