ISRO Launches Aditya-L1, India’s First Mission To Study the Sun

Video Producer/Editor: Mayank Chawla

After a historic landing on the Moon with Chandrayaan-3, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its first spacecraft (Aditya-L1) to study the Sun. 

Details: ISRO launched the Aditya-L1 mission through its PSLV XL rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota.

• The launch took place at 11:50 am IST on 2 September.

Will it go to the Sun? No, duh. "The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth," ISRO said.

• "A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses," it added.

• The positioning of the spacecraft will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time, the space agency further said.

The spacecraft will take around four months from the launch date to reach the L1 orbit.

Why it matters: The information provided by Aditya L1 will help to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc, ISRO added.

Know more: The spacecraft carries seven payloads, namely remote sensing payloads such as:

• Visible Emission Line Coronagraph(VELC)

• Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT)

• Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS)

• High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer(HEL1OS)

And in-situ payloads

• Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment(ASPEX)

• Plasma Analyser Package For Aditya (PAPA)

• Advanced Tri-axial High Resolution Digital Magnetometers

These payloads will help in observing photosphere (visible surface of the Sun), chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors, as per ISRO.

What Are the Objectives of Aditya-L1?

According to ISRO, Aditya-L1 will:

• Study of solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics.

• Study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionized plasma, initiation of the coronal mass ejections, and flares

• Observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment providing data for the study of particle dynamics from the Sun.

• Physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism.

• Diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: Temperature, velocity and density.

• Development, dynamics and origin of CMEs.

• Identify the sequence of processes that occur at multiple layers (chromosphere, base and extended corona) which eventually leads to solar eruptive events.

• Magnetic field topology and magnetic field measurements in the solar corona.

• Drivers for space weather (origin, composition and dynamics of solar wind.