India’s Next Space Mission – Exploring the Sun!
After achieving a historic lunar feat by landing near the Moon’s enigmatic southern pole, India is setting its sights on an even more daring space venture. In a matter of days, India’s space agency will kick off an extraordinary journey, launching a spacecraft aimed at investigating our very own Sun.
Scheduled for September 2, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to unveil the Aditya-L1 satellite, a pioneering Indian observatory designed to scrutinize the Sun. Named “Aditya” after the Hindi word for “Sun,” this spacecraft will be propelled into a specialized orbit called a halo orbit, positioned around 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) away from Earth. This strategic location will grant the satellite an unobstructed and consistent view of the Sun.
🚀PSLV-C57/🛰️Aditya-L1 Mission:
The launch of Aditya-L1,
the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun ☀️, is scheduled for
🗓️September 2, 2023, at
🕛11:50 Hrs. IST from Sriharikota.Citizens are invited to witness the launch from the Launch View Gallery at… pic.twitter.com/bjhM5mZNrx
— ISRO (@isro) August 28, 2023
Why this distant orbit? ISRO highlights that this approach will enhance our ability to monitor solar activities and their influence on space weather as they unfold in real-time.
Aditya-L1 is armed with seven advanced instruments known as payloads, each with a specific task to explore the Sun’s outermost layers – the photosphere and chromosphere. These payloads employ electromagnetic and particle field detectors, allowing them to delve into the Sun’s secrets.
The mission has a variety of objectives, one of which is to uncover the forces driving space weather. This entails comprehending the behavior of solar wind, which is a flow of charged particles emitted by the Sun and interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.
Although NASA and the European Space Agency have conducted Sun-focused missions before, Aditya-L1 marks India’s debut in this domain.
Only recently, the unmanned Chandrayaan-3, aptly named “Mooncraft” in Sanskrit, achieved a remarkable landing on the lunar surface. This achievement placed India within a select category of countries – the United States, Russia, and China – that have accomplished triumphant landings on the Moon.
This significant stride is part of India’s space program, which, while cost-effective, has been making impressive strides since its debut Moon orbiter in 2008. The country’s space endeavours thrive by adapting and enhancing existing technology, capitalizing on the expertise of its highly skilled engineers who earn considerably less than their international counterparts.
Notably, India holds a pioneering title in Asia for launching a spacecraft into Mars’ orbit in 2014. The nation has its sights set on more ambitious missions, including a three-day crewed mission in Earth’s orbit expected next year. Furthermore, collaborative ventures are in the pipeline, including a joint lunar mission with Japan by 2025 and an orbital expedition to Venus within the next two years.
The sky is merely a starting point; India’s enthusiastic odyssey into the cosmos is only the commencement.
India’s Next Space Mission – Exploring the Sun!
