PROBA-3 is the third small satellite technology development and demonstration precursor mission within ESA's GSTP (General Support Technology Program) series. The primary mission objective is to demonstrate the technologies required for formation flying of multiple spacecraft in the fields of space science, Earth Observation and surveillance. This involves the in-orbit validation of these new Formation Flying (FF) techniques and technologies through a series of precision FF maneuvers, including formation acquisition, high precision pointing, reorientation, maintenance, resizing, rotation and slew.

    The PROBA-3 mission concept comprises two independent minisatellites in HEO (Highly-elliptical Earth Orbit) in PFF (Precise Formation Flying) formation, close to one another with the ability to accurately control the attitude and separation of the two satellites.

    The basic PROBA-3 mission objectives are summarized in the following list:

    • Formation flying demonstration: The primary objective of PROBA-3 is to demonstrate and validate formation flying with high precision and to demonstrate it for future formation flying missions.

    • Equipment qualification: Precision Formation Flying and efficient use of propellant calls for technology development in metrology, e.g. RF metrology systems and high accuracy optical metrology systems. The PROBA-3 mission will demonstrate these technologies to TRL 9 (Technology Readiness Level 9).

    • Development, design and validation principles for formation flight: The distributed character of Formation Flying systems calls for new development, design, implementation and validation principles. PROBA 3 will contribute towards the establishment of these principles, and the development of required tools (simulators, etc.). Advanced assembly, integration and verification approach and tools. Relative dynamics experiments: PROBA-3 will incorporate 6DOF formation control with thrusters, realistic collision avoidance demonstration and rendezvous experiments.

    • Guest payload: In addition to the Formation Flying experiments and demonstrations a scientific camera, ASPIICS, will be flown - a large (length about 150 m) solar Coronagraph Instrument distributed over the Formation. Using the PROBA-3 generic Formation Flying capabilities, the Formation Flying of this distributed single Virtual Instrument will constitute a convincing demonstration of Formation Flying in addition to provide scientific mission return.

    Consortium of PROBA-3: The project is lead by a consortium of industrial companies in several ESA member states (in alphabetic order): DEIMOS (Spain, Portugal), EADS-CASA Espacio (Spain), GMV Space and Defence (Spain), NGC Aerospace (Canada), OHB-Sweden, formerly SSC (Sweden), RedWire (Belgium), SENER (Spain), Spacebel (Belgium).

    SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas S. A. is the designated mission prime for the CDE phase.

    The Scientific payload is composed pf a coronagraph imager, ASPIICS, and an absolute radiometer, DARA. ASPIICS is provided by CLS (Centre Spatial de Liège), Liège, Belgium, and DARA by PMOD (Physikalisches-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos), Davos, Switzerland. 

     

     

    A much more detailed description can be found on the EOPORTAL.ORG site, from which a part of its content was taken over to write these pages.