BENGALURU (Reuters) -The European Space Agency on Thursday launched Proba-3, a cutting-edge Sun-observing mission, aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s flagship rocket.
The launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, originally scheduled for Wednesday, had been delayed because of a technical snag. The mission is intended to advance global efforts to understand economic and technological risks of space weather.
Proba-3, a two-satellite system developed over more than a decade, is designed to last two years.
It lifted off aboard ISRO’s PSLV-XL rocket at 1034 GMT. At around 1058 GMT, PSLV mission director M. Jayakumar announced that the satellite had been injected into orbit.
For the ESA, Proba-3 strengthens its solar research capabilities, joining its Solar Orbiter in the study of the sun’s complex dynamics.
Thursday’s launch also builds on ISRO’s recent accomplishments, including the Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing and its own sun-studying Aditya-L1 solar observatory.
“The corona of the sun … has been very poorly investigated. One of the things we really want to understand is … how do coronal mass ejections or solar wind originate in this area,” Proba-3 Systems Engineer Esther Bastida Pertegaz said in a pre-recorded video.
The corona is a critical region for understanding solar phenomena such as coronal mass ejections and flares. These events can severely disrupt communications, navigation systems, and power grids on earth.
The mission enables observations of the sun’s inner corona for up to six hours per orbit — far surpassing the fleeting moments of natural solar eclipses that occur only around 60 times a century.
The project, costing about 200 million euros ($210 million), is supported by over 40 European companies, including SENER Aerospace, Redwire Space, and Airbus Defence and Space.
ESA has been struggling with setbacks and delays in its launch programme, with the first commercial flight of the flagship Ariane 6 heavy launcher postponed to next year and access to Russia’s Soyuz rockets severed by the breakdown in relations over Ukraine.
ESA said it opted for ISRO’s PSLV-XL to deploy the spacecraft because of its cost efficiency and performance.
While ISRO advances its Gaganyaan program to send Indian astronauts into space and plans further explorations of the Moon, Mars, and Venus, it is also positioning itself as a global commercial launch provider.
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(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Andrew Cawthorne)
