We remember… On December 5th 2024, ESA’s Proba-3 pair of small satellites smoothly soared into space on a PSLV-XL launcher from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, near Chennai, in India.

For many years, SPACEBEL has been playing a crucial role in the development of this precision formation flying mission meant to study the corona of the Sun thanks to the creation of artificial solar eclipses in orbit.

During the first weeks of their journey to the Sun, both satellites remained attached together.
On January 15th 00:00 CET, they successfully split up at a distance of 60.000 km from Earth while flying at a speed of 1 km per second.   
Even is the separation relied on a well-known technology, which is routinely used when a spacecraft is released from its launcher, executing this kind of operation at spacecraft level is quite unusual as satellites are rarely physically connected during launch.

Several SPACEBEL members have contributed to this milestone along with the operations team at the ESA-ESEC site in Redu (Belgium).

Up to the real work now, i.e. the operational phase when Proba-3 will start its formation flying and sun watching mission from March onwards!