Final preparations have begun for a landmark space mission that will use satellites flying in close formation to create artificial solar eclipses high above the Earth.

The Proba-3 mission is the European Space Agency’s first attempt at precise formation flying in orbit and calls for two spacecraft to loop around the planet in an arrangement that never deviates by more than a millimetre, about the thickness of a human fingernail.

All being well, the spacecraft will blast off from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the Bay of Bengal coast, at 4.08pm local time (10.38am UK time) on Wednesday. After a four-month voyage, the probes will reach a highly elliptic orbit that swoops as close as 370 miles to Earth before swinging out for more than 37,000 miles.