From Cleo Abram.

This new probe is about to create artificial eclipses of the sun! In order to study the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona…

The corona is a crazy place. It can be 500 times HOTTER than the surface of the sun itself. Scientists want to understand what happens there – like solar mass ejections and solar winds – which can affect us here on earth. But to study just the corona, we need to block out the rest of the sun’s bright light.

So to do that, this probe will split in two and fly those two parts 150 meters apart while keeping them perfectly aligned… down to 1 millimeter precision.
The first part will cast a shadow on the second, creating a little mini solar eclipse for the second probe, allowing it to collect data on the corona around the sun. What makes this mission so hard is that the probes will need to stay perfectly aligned and distanced to take these measurements…

The probe recently launched and is going to start collecting data soon!

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