After the stupendous success of Chandrayaan-3, which saw its spacecraft making a soft-landing on the lunar surface last Wednesday, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday declared that India’s first Solar Mission to study the Sun would be launched on September 2 at 11.50 AM from Sriharikota spaceport, the country’s gateway to Space. The flight has been named PSLV-C57 Aditya L1 mission.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to provide remote observations of the solar corona and in-situ observations of the solar wind at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), which is about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.
S Somanath, Chairman, ISRO said on Monday, “A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle XL rocket will carry Aditya-L1, the first Space-based Indian observatory, to study the Sun.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who flew down to ISRO headquarters straight from Athens early on Saturday morning to congratulate the scientists and engineers over the success of the soft landing on the Moon’s South Pole, had made it known that the country was all set for its mission to the Sun. With the launch of Aditya-L1, India would become the fourth space-faring nation in the world which has its eyes on the Sun, an eternally interesting and mysterious star which is home to fission as well as fusion reactions.
Aditya-L1 is a fully-indigenous effort with the participation of national institutions, an ISRO official said.
The Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is the lead institute for the development of the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) payload while the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, has developed the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) payload for the mission.
According to ISRO, VELC aims to collect data to solve the mystery of how the temperature of the corona can reach about a million degrees Centigrade while the Sun’s surface itself stays just over 6,000 degrees. Aditya-L1 that would be stationed in a halo orbit around the L-1 would carry seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the corona — the outermost layers of the Sun — in different wavebands.
The observatory would have the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any obstruction. This will help the scientists to observe the solar activities and the effect on Space weather in real time.
Aditya-L1 would have a life span of five years and two months. It will take 125 days for Aditya-L1 to get parked in the destined orbit and the VELC will be used for imaging and spectroscopy of the Sun to better understand the science powering the star. Apart from VELC, six other instruments will also explore the Sun. While four payloads would directly view the Sun from the unique vantage point of L1, the remaining three payloads will carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at L1. Incidentally, the L1 point is currently home to NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite.
Lagrange Points are positions in Space where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. Lagrange Points were named so in honour of Italian-French mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange.
