Days after scripting history on the Moon, India will aim for the Sun on Saturday (September 2) with its maiden solar expedition, as ISRO’s trusted PSLV will carry the Aditya L1 mission on a 125-day voyage to the Sun. Ahead of solar mission, the space agency shared some key facts about the Aditya-L1
Here are some quick facts:
- Aditya-L1 will stay approximately 1.5 million km away from Earth, directed towards the Sun, which is about 1 per cent of the Earth-Sun distance
- The Sun is a giant sphere of gas and Aditya-L1 would study the outer atmosphere of the Sun
- Aditya-L1 will neither land on the Sun nor approach the Sun any closer
Countdown begins
According to ISRO, the 23.10-hour countdown for the launch of Aditya-L1 onboard PSLV C57 commenced here on Friday. The Sun Observatory mission will be fired from the second launch pad at this spaceport at 11.50 am on Saturday, and comes close on the heels of India’s successful moon expedition last month, Chandrayaan-3.
Aditya L1 is designed for providing remote observations of the solar corona and conduct in-situ observations of the solar wind at L1 (Sun-Earth Lagrangian point), which is about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. According to ISRO, there are five Lagrangian points between the Sun and the Earth, and the L1 point in the Halo orbit would provide a greater advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occurrence of eclipse.
What ISRO used for solar mission?
ISRO scientists have used ‘XL’, the more powerful variant of the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV) that would carry the spacecraft on Saturday along with the seven payloads. Similar PSLV-XL variants were used in the Chandrayaan-1 mission in 2008 and the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) in 2013.
Of the total seven payloads, four onboard the spacecraft would directly view the Sun while the remaining three would undertake in-situ studies of particles and fields at the L1 point. Initially, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft would be placed in a low earth orbit. It would be made more elliptical and later the spacecraft will be launched towards the Lagrange point L1 by using on-board propulsion systems.
(With PTI inputs)
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