ESA launches spacecraft that will eventually create artificial solar eclipse

Satellites on the Proba-3 rocket will fly in formation to within millimeters of each other as if they were one giant spacecraft, ESA said. The agency said 14 ESA member states came together in what they hope to demonstrate a new high-skill autonomous control and maneuvers in space.

Proba-3 launched Thursday morning from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India with the satellites stacked on a four-stage rocket.

"Proba-3 has been many years in the making, supported through the ESA's General Support Technology Program fostering novel technologies for space," Dietmar Pilz, ESA's director of technology, engineering, and quality, said in a statement. "It is an exciting feeling to see this challenging enterprise enter orbit."

Damien Galano, Proba-3's mission manager, said now that the mission is actually off the ground, critical challenges still await.

"Now the hard work really begins because, to achieve Proba-3's mission goals, the two satellites need to achieve positioning accuracy down to the thickness of the average fingernail while positioned one and a half football pitches apart."

Radhakrishnan Durairaj, chairman and managing director of NewSpace India Limited, said his agency was "honored" to be part of the ESA mission, which was lifted into orbit with the help of six solid rocket boosters.

The satellites will eventually reach a highly elliptical orbit during its mission that will take it from 373 miles from Earth all the way to 37,612 miles.