Spain has contributed around 40% of Proba-3’s budget.
The Spanish company Sener leads the Proba-3 demonstration mission.
The European Space Agency has used artificial eclipses for years through missions including SOHO, Solar Orbiter, and Proba-3.
Sener led the ESA Proba-3 mission in 2025.
The ESA Proba-3 mission used two satellites flying in formation to obtain coronagraphy of the solar corona.
An anomaly aboard ESA’s PROBA-3 Coronagraph spacecraft on February 14, 2026 caused progressive loss of attitude and prevented safe mode entry.
ESA teams located the tumbling PROBA-3 Coronagraph spacecraft by mid-March 2026 using optical and radar data, and they reestablished contact on March 18, 2026.
By April 2026, the PROBA-3 Coronagraph had regained three-axis stabilization and its ASPIICS solar coronagraphy instrument was confirmed healthy.
Redwire previously delivered onboard computers for ESA’s Hera asteroid mission, the Comet Interceptor mission, and the Proba-3 formation-flying demonstration satellite.
Proba-3 has already observed solar-wind speeds and accelerations that surprised its team.
Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft blocks direct sunlight for about five hours at a time so that the Coronagraph spacecraft can observe the solar corona.
Joe Zender is the ESA Proba-3 project scientist.
Proba-3’s ASPIICS coronagraph can observe the Sun’s corona out to 70,000 km from the solar surface, about one-tenth of the solar radius.
Proba-3 creates artificial total solar eclipses by flying two spacecraft in an extremely precise formation.
Andrei Zhukov is the scientific lead for Proba-3’s ASPIICS instrument at the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
The Proba-3 team tracked some plasma masses moving at 250-500 km/s.
Proba-3 has observed slow solar-wind bursts in the inner corona moving three to four times faster than expected.
The Proba-3 data set is intended to be compared with theoretical models of the solar magnetic field and plasma acceleration in the corona.
The first Proba-3 data set shows a wide range of velocities, accelerations, and motion directions in the inner corona.
Redwire’s Belgium facility has contributed spacecraft platforms and technology to ESA programs including Proba-1, Proba-2, Proba-V, Proba-3, Σyndeo-3, and ALTIUS.