Initial Results of Total Solar Irradiance Measurements by DARA-PROBA3

The ESA-PROBA3 spacecraft was successfully launched aboard a four-stage PSLV-XL rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on Thursday, December 5th, at 11:34 CET (10:34 GMT, 16:04 local time).  Formation flying a pair of spacecraft will form an artificial solar eclipse in space, casting a precisely-controlled shadow from the Occulter platform to the  Coronograph spacecraft to open up sustained views of the Sun's faint surrounding corona. The payload on the ESA-PROBA3 Occulter spacecraft includes the Digital Absolute Radiometer (DARA) from the Physikalisch Meteorologisches Observatorium, Davos and World Radiation Center (PMOD/WRC). It aims at measuring the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) in orbit. The destination of the spacecraft is a highly elliptical orbit (600 x 60530 km at around 59 degree inclination). We will present the initial results from this new experiment since its launch.