India to launch ESA's Proba-3 spacecraft in December: Jitendra Singh

India will launch the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission early next month from the spaceport at Sriharikota, Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said here on Tuesday. Singh said the two satellites that are part of the Proba-3 mission to study the Sun were brought to Sriharikota on Tuesday morning for integration with ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

"Proba-3 mission of the European Space Agency will be launched by a PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in the first week of December," Singh said at the Indian Space Conclave organised by the Indian Space Association.

The mission is likely to be launched on December 4.



The two Proba-3 spacecraft will be launched together by the PSLV-XL launcher and placed in the highly elliptical orbit which will ascend to 60,000 km away from Earth before coming as low as just 600 km.

This high orbit is required because the pair of spacecraft will perform their active formation flying for a planned six hours at a time around their maximum altitude, where Earth's gravitational pull will be diminished, as will the amount of propellant needed to fine-tune their positions.


Proba-3's two satellites will enable sustained views of the Sun's faint surrounding atmosphere, or corona, that has previously only been visible for a few brief moments during solar eclipses viewed from the Earth.

To achieve this the shadow being cast between the spacecraft must remain in a precise position, which means they must fly autonomously in formation to an accuracy of a single millimetre - about the thickness of an average fingernail.

This is the first time that an ESA mission is being launched from India since the original Proba-1 Earth-observing mission in 2001.