ISRO Successfully Launches Aditya-L1 Into Orbit To Study The Sun
Solar Mission: Aditya-L1 Undergoes Trajectory Correction
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully launched India’s first solar probe Aditya-L1 mission at 11:50 am to explore the sun from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota.
As per information, the mission seeks to study solar winds which can cause disturbances on earth commonly known as auroras. The solar mission comes after India beat Russia last month to be the first country to successfully land on the moon’s south pole.
While Russia used a more powerful rocket to land its Luna-25 on the moon last month, India’s Chandrayaan–3 successfully made a successful moon landing.
The 1.5-million-kilometre (9,30,000 miles) journey to a parking lot in outer space, where objects gravitationally balance each other, reducing the spacecraft’s fuel consumption over a four-month period, is planned for the Aditya L1 spacecraft.
The 1,480 kg spacecraft will be carried by India’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and put in a highly elliptical orbit of 235 km x 19,500 km around the Earth. The PSLV in its XL configuration, has six solid fuel-based boosters that will take just over an hour to place the satellite in orbit.
The orbit as well as the velocity of the spacecraft will then be increased till it is slingshot towards the Sun. The distance of 1.5 million km to L1 point will be covered in nearly four months (125 days). The spacecraft will then be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1 point. The seven science experiments onboard will continue collecting data for the next five years.
It will be positioned in a halo around L1 (the Sun-Earth system’s Lagrangian point).
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.
