The sun is not so far from Belgium anymore. For years they have been testing their new creation just in order to start the space adventure, what they call a “technological demonstration mission”. On 2^nd of November, at 2:50 the micro-satellite PROBA2 lifted off from Pletsek (Russia) in an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Cold War.

The following day, ESA established a meeting in La Salle Meridiènne at the Royal Observatory of Belgium to report to the world the success of the launch. The total mission has not been expensive; it cost only 17 million dollars to put everything into space. Now PROBA2 has a front-row seat for observing the sun located in the terminator, the boundary between day and night on the Earth. The most important thing is the content: a large variety of instruments that will enrich everyone´s lives in the coming years.

The science payload on-board PROBA2 consists of two main solar

instruments: Lyman-Alpha Radiometer (LYRA) and Sun Watcher

with Active Pixels and Image Processing (SWAP), both of them examples of international cooperation between several countries: from Ireland to Switzerland and Belgium, counting also with Germany´s help.
SWAP is developed by Le Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL) and the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and will be in charge of taking pictures from the solar radiation, as a successor of EIT, another instrument launched on the SOHO mission in 2002, which has been providing uninterrupted observations of the sun until nowadays.

LYRA is a solar X and UV filter photometer designed and manufactured by a Belgian-Swiss Consortium. It will investigate the

variability of the solar radiation with photo detectors made of diamonds which make it blind for optical light while remaining sensitive to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Together, SWAP and LYRA will give information about space weather, electromagnetic radiation and behaviour of the solar plasma. These solar instruments will be beneficial to everybody because they will give sophisticated details about the Earth, which can be used for applications related to space radar, improving nowadays the GPS systems. The first images from the sun will not be available until January, so now it is just a matter of time to prove that everything has been done correctly and that technology goes faster than real life.