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At the end of March 2025, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission has successfully demonstrated autonomous precision formation flying, marking a historic achievement in space technology.
Thanks to the VTS tool (Visualization Tool for Space data) developed by SPACEBEL for and with CNES, this precision “space dance” was simulated on the ground months before the Proba-3 departure into Space. (https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/02/Proba-3_satellites_acquiring_formation_simulated_in_VTS)

The groundbreaking Proba-3 mission consists of two satellites — the Occulter and the Coronagraph — which align to create artificial solar eclipses. This setup allows for uninterrupted observation of the Sun’s corona, filling a critical gap in solar research that natural eclipses cannot provide.

The Proba-3 satellites maintain an extraordinary millimetric precision while flying 150 meters apart, which has never been achieved before in space. This approach is expected to pave the way for future missions requiring highly coordinated satellite formations, thus reducing the need for large, costly spacecraft.

Although several current missions use formation flying technologies, Proba-3’s two spacecraft will be the first to autonomously sustain their relative positions with millimetric precision for hours at a time, without ground intervention.

Thanks to the precious data gathered over the past days, the Proba-3 engineering and flight’s control team will be able to fine-tune the systems. In the weeks ahead, additional tests will be conducted to achieve the required precision, ultimately making Proba-3 the pioneering mission in autonomous precision formation flying.

SPACEBEL is a key contributor to Proba-3’s success as we have been responsible for developing the ground segment software, the on-board software piloting Proba-3’s pair of platforms and communicating with the payloads as well as the satellites’ simulator supporting the software testing and operation preparation.

Our teams remain currently in the loop to provide occasional support in the Proba-3 mission room at ESA-ESEC in Redu (Belgium).