Successful launch of the PROBA-3 satellite: Another space mission for NGC Aerospace

Photo credits : European Space Agency

SHERBROOKE, Quebec, Canada, [December 05, 2024] — Today at 4:04 p.m. local time (5:34 a.m. in Sherbrooke), the European Space Agency’s (ESA) PROBA-3 satellite was launched into orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, for a two-year scientific mission to study the solar corona.

Once in orbit, PROBA-3 will separate into two fully autonomous satellites: the Occulter, whose mission is to hide the disk of the Sun to allow the second satellite, the Coronagraph, to take measurements of the solar corona without being blinded by the solar disk, which is much brighter. According to Jean de Lafontaine, President and CEO of NGC, ”The aim of the mission is to create artificial eclipses every 20 hours, each lasting 6 hours, allowing scientists to conduct prolonged and repeated observations of the solar corona to better unravel its mysteries.”

The solar corona, the site of solar eruptions that can reach hundreds of thousands of kilometers in altitude, is the subject of extensive scientific research to advance our understanding of the Sun and to better comprehend the ”solar storms” that can affect the operation of satellites and interfere with communication networks and power generation plants on Earth.

PROBA-3 is the sixth ESA satellite for which NGC Aerospace contributes the embedded software intelligence that provides satellites with unprecedented agility, precision, and autonomy to position and orient the satellite. This technology significantly reduces satellite operating costs while maximizing the quality of scientific data. ”This is especially important for the PROBA-3 mission since the software developed by NGC will autonomously control the orientation of the two satellites to millidegree accuracy and their position to millimeter accuracy, while maintaining their nominal distance of 150 meters, to achieve a perfect eclipse,” emphasizes Jean-François Hamel, Vice President of Space Systems and PROBA-3 Project Manager.

This collaboration of more than two decades between NGC Aerospace, ESA and European satellite manufacturers was made possible thanks to the Canada-ESA Collaboration Agreement.

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