 |
| | India's maiden Sun mission lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday morning |
Aditya-L1 lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday at 11:50 India time (06:20 GMT).
It will travel 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from the Earth - 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.
India's space agency says it will take four months to travel that far.
India's first space-based mission to study the solar system's biggest object is named after Surya - the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya.
And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 - the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading.
According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects - such as the Sun and the Earth - cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to "hover".
Once Aditya-L1 reaches this "parking spot", it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.
On Saturday morning, a few thousand people gathered in the viewing gallery set up by the Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) near the launch site to watch the blast off.
It was also broadcast live on national TV where commentators described it as a "magnificent" launch. Isro scientists said the launch had been successful and its "performance is normal".
After an hour and four minutes of flight-time, Isro declared it "mission successful".
"Now it will continue on its journey - it's a very long journey of 135 days, let's wish it [the] best of luck," Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said.
Project director Nigar Shaji said once Aditya-L1 reaches its destination, it will benefit not only India, but the global scientific community.
Aditya-L1 will now travel several times around the Earth before being launched towards L1.
From this vantage position, it will be able to watch the Sun constantly - even when it is hidden during an eclipse - and carry out scientific studies.
Isro has not said how much the mission would cost, but reports in the Indian press put it at 3.78bn rupees ($46m; £36m).
Aditya L1 Mission Trajectory
The first Indian solar mission to study the Sun
 |
| | Source : Indian Space Research Organisation |
Isro says the orbiter carries seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona (the outermost layer); the photosphere (the Sun's surface or the part we see from the Earth) and the chromosphere (a thin layer of plasma that lies between the photosphere and the corona).
The studies will help scientists understand solar activity, such as solar wind and solar flares, and their effect on Earth and near-space weather in real time.
Former Isro scientist Mylswamy Annadurai says the Sun constantly influences the Earth's weather through radiation, heat and flow of particles and magnetic fields. At the same time, he says, it also impacts the space weather.
"Space weather plays a role in how effectively satellites operate," Mr. Annadurai said. Solar winds or storms can affect satellites' electronics, even knocking out power grids. But there are gaps in our knowledge about space weather."
India has more than 50 satellites in space and they provide many crucial services to the country, including communication links, data on weather, and help predict pest infestations, droughts and impending disasters. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), approximately 10,290 satellites remain in the Earth's orbit, with nearly 7,800 of them currently operational.
Aditya will help us better understand, and even give us a forewarning, about the star on which our lives depend, Mr Annadurai says.
"Knowing the activities of the Sun such as solar wind or a solar eruption a couple of days ahead will help us move our satellites out of harm's way. This will help increase the longevity of our satellites in space."
 |
| | The mission will help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star |
The mission, he adds, will above all help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star that holds our solar system together.
India's solar mission comes just days after the country successfully landed the world's first-ever probe near the lunar south pole.
With that, India also became only the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
If Aditya-L1 is successful, India will join the select group of countries that are already studying the Sun.
Japan was the first to launch a mission in 1981 to study solar flares and the US space agency Nasa and European Space Agency (ESA) have been watching the Sun since the 1990s.
In February 2020, Nasa and ESA jointly launched a Solar Orbiter that is studying the Sun from close quarters and gathering data that, scientists say, will help understand what drives its dynamic behavior.
And in 2021, Nasa's newest spacecraft Parker Solar Probe made history by becoming the first to fly through corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun.
The vehicle has placed the satellite precisely into its intended orbit. India's first solar observatory has begun its journey to the destination of Sun-Earth L1 point
Aditya L1 shall be the first space based Indian mission to study the Sun. 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.
A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time.
The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors. Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium
The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial informations 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.
Science Objectives:
The major science objectives of Aditya-L1 mission are:
- 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 .
Aditya-L1 Payloads:
 |
| | Aditya-L1 Payloads |
The instruments of Aditya-L1 are tuned to observe the solar atmosphere mainly the chromosphere and corona. In-situ instruments will observe the local environment at L1. There are total seven payloads on-board with four of them carrying out remote sensing of the Sun and three of them carrying in-situ observation.
Payloads along with their major capability of scientific investigation.
Source : ISRO
0 Comments