Proba-3’s first artificial solar eclipse
Big week for European space, funding and ESA milestones
Welcome to Aerospace Insider 🚀
Hope you are off to a good week. Let’s get to the news of the week.
Today’s summary:
🚀 Aerospace News: Big week for European space, funding and ESA milestones
🔍 Deep Dive: Proba-3 makes history (this time for real)
Aerospace Weekly Roundup
Catch the latest European & global space industry highlights you don’t want to miss!
🚀 Polaris gets a cash boost
POLARIS Spaceplanes has secured an additional €5.3 million in funding for their recent seed round. With this addition, the total funding amounts to €12.4 million plus customer contracts worth €10 million. The money will help bring its first commercial product to market and pre-fund future customer contracts. The company is developing the AURORA spaceplane, a reusable hypersonic vehicle, and is currently testing key technologies like its aerospike engine with MIRA demonstrators.
🔥 Arkadia Space fires green thruster
Arkadia Space successfully tested it’s green propulsion system in space. The thruster uses a non-toxic propellant and performed exactly as expected, validating the design and simulation models. This makes Arkadia the first European company with a flight proven system of this kind, offering satellite builders a cheaper and easier alternative to traditional toxic fuels for their missions.
🛰️ Look Up secures record-breaking funding
Space safety startup Look Up has raised €50 million in one of Europe's largest ever spacetech Series A rounds. The company is building a network of radars and software to track orbital objects and help satellite operators avoid collisions. The new funding will boost its international expansion, help build new radar stations, and validate its services in orbit.
🤝 ESA strengthens partnerships
At its recent council meeting, the European Space Agency emphasised international cooperation and European resilience. A new programme for security using Earth observation was approved. Amid concerns over NASA's budget, member states stressed the need for European autonomy. The agency also approved extended cooperation agreements with the UN, the European Maritime Safety Agency and Ukraine's space agency.
🚀 Alpha Impulsion's hot fire engine test
Alpha Impulsion has hot fired what it calls the world's largest autophage rocket engine. The engine, which consumes its own structure as fuel, ran for 17 seconds. While the test demonstrated the propulsion concept, the company reported that the engine experienced significant instabilities three seconds after ignition. Engineers are now working to identify the root cause of the issue.
🛰️ ESA releases first-ever Proba-3 solar eclipse pictures
Read more below!
🔍 What caught your eye this week? I (try to) cover the best stories but there’s always more happening. Reply and let me know what space news you found most interesting or what I should cover next! I read all replies.
Europe's revolution: Proba-3’s eclipse is a glimpse of the future
You might consider me biased but I worked for some time for this mission so hold it very dear.
Today, ESA dropped the first stunning images from Proba-3's artificial solar eclipse. And let's be clear: while the images of the sun’s corona are amazing and a bit “ok, nice, so what?”, they are not the most important part of this story.
This is ESA demonstrating a technology that will quietly reshape what’s possible in orbit… You’ll see why.
The mission achieved what was, until recently, pure science fiction: two satellites flying 150 metres apart, holding their position with millimetric precision for hours, with no one on the ground controlling the spacecraft. Both satellites thus became like a single, virtual 150-metre long instrument in space.
This is a monumental feat of engineering.
But the real story here isn’t the (of course fantastic for some) solar science. The artificial eclipse is the perfect excuse to prove the technology. The true product of Proba-3, in my opinion, is the demonstration of high-precision autonomous formation flying itself. This is a technology demonstration mission and its implications are far more profound than just getting a better look at the sun (although this is very useful too!).
Why is this important?
One of the key things here is that this isn’t just an incremental improvement, which is something you could expect from Europe, but quite a sudden jump. Proba-3’s success now open new architectures for space infrastructure. We’ve mentioned a few before but:
Distributed telescopes: imagine launching dozens of smaller, cheaper mirrors that assemble themselves in orbit into a single, virtual telescope with an aperture of hundreds of metres. Still a bit far fetched but it would act as a successor to James Webb for a fraction of the cost.
In-orbit assembly and manufacturing: the same technology that allows Proba-3 to hold a perfect formation can guide modules to autonomously dock, building space stations, orbital factories, or fuel depots without human interaction and extreme precision.
Future servicing spacecraft: a servicing vehicle could hold a perfect, steady position relative to a tumbling satellite to inspect or repair it
Enhanced communications: laser communications are much faster but require a lot more pointing accuracy by the spacecraft. High precision flight formation technology will be used alongside laser comms. You’ll see.
While the space world is often dominated by the "bigger, faster, louder" narrative of large rockets and constellations, Proba-3 shows what Europe can do if organised properly and with a clear focus (although the mission did accumulate some delays). Developed under ESA’s small General Support Technology Programme, this mission shows that you don’t need a very large budget to innovate in this industry (but a bit more funding wouldn’t be bad either).
Proba-3 has delivered more than just data, it has validated a new technology. Its impact won’t just be related to solar physics but will be in a way imprinted in future rendezvous, servicing and space infrastructure missions...
Let’s go Proba-3!!!!
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Jaime
Thanks good article.