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Two European satellites launch on mission to blot out the Sun—for science

This will all happen nearly 40,000 miles above the Earth, so you won’t need your eclipse glasses.

Two spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency launched on top of an Indian rocket Thursday, kicking off a mission to test novel formation flying technologies and observe a rarely seen slice of the Sun's ethereal corona. The laser light bounced back to the Occulter spacecraft will allow it to autonomously and continuously track the range to its companion and send signals to fire cold gas thrusters and make fine adjustments. The laser will give Proba-3 the ability to control the distance between the two satellites with an error of less than a millimeter—around the thickness of an average fingernail—and hold position for up to six hours, 50 times longer than the maximum duration of a total solar eclipse.

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