SRIHARIKOTA: The Indian space research organisation launched the PSLV-C59 vehicle carrying Proba-3 spacecraft from Satish Dhawan Space Station in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at 4.04 pm on Thursday.

Two satellites are part of the European Space Agency's Proba-3 mission. The launch, scheduled for yesterday, was later postponed to Thursday due to technical issues. Probe 3 is a mission to study the outermost and hottest halo (corona) of the Sun's atmosphere.

It is an In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) mission run by the European Space Agency. This is the first launch for the European Space Agency since 2001. 550 kg satellites will be put into orbits at altitudes of up to 60,000 km. The mission goal is to demonstrate precise formation flying. It consists of 2 spacecraft viz. the Coronagraph Spacecraft (CSC) and the Occulter Spacecraft (OSC) and they will be launched together in a stacked configuration.

The satellites on Proba 3 are Occulter (200 kg) and Coronagraph (340 kg). The mission is designed to study the Sun's halo by artificially creating a solar eclipse. The duration of the mission is two years with a cost of around Rs 1680 crore. The probes will be placed in an elliptical orbit with a minimum distance of 600 km and a maximum distance of 60,530 km from Earth. Proba 3 is a follow-up mission to Proba 1 launched by ISRO in 2001 and Proba 2 launched in 2009.