Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission, launched by ISRO in southern India
by Surya PrakashThe Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched its maiden solar expedition-Aditya L1 from southern India’s Andhra Pradesh.
This happened at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on September 2.
Visuals showed the spacecraft being successfully launched from the space centre in Sriharikota. The lift off PSLV C57 with the Aditya-L1 on board drew applause from the people who watched this as the spacecraft jetted off into the sky.
The spacecraft will have a four-month-long journey to Lagrangian Point (LP) 1, in the halo orbit from where it will study the sun, being at a distance of 1.5 million km away from the Earth. An XL variant of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was used for this mission and after this launch, it will stay in the Earth’s orbit for 16 days. A total of seven different payloads will be carried by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft. Out of these seven, four payloads will study and observe the light from the sun while three will be computing the in-situ parameters of plasma and magnetic fields. With this mission, India would be able to study the solar atmosphere and understand celestial phenomena and climate changes on Earth.
India achieved history not very long ago when Chandrayaan-3 made a successful landing on the moon. With this, India became the first nation in the world to land on the moon’s south pole and fourth overall to make a landing on the lunar surface. Until now, only the United States of America and the European Space Agency (ESA) have had solar missions.
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