Will Proba-3 phone home? European solar-eclipse satellite goes dark

How the kind of external coronagraph developed through StarTiger-2 would work in practice: ESA plans to make Proba-3 the first mission of this kind.

Europe has lost contact with one of its two Proba-3 spacecraft, after an anomaly caused the vehicle to lose orientation.

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Proba-3 mission launched to Earth orbit from India in December 2024. Proba-3 consists of two spacecraft designed to fly in precise formation to create artificial solar eclipses in space, allowing scientists to study the sun’s faint outer atmosphere, or corona. But the mission may be in jeopardy after an anomaly that occurred the weekend of Feb. 14 caused one of the probes to lose orientation.