After Mission Moon, All Eyes on Sun: ISRO to Launch Aditya L1, India’s Debut Solar Mission | Explained

Immediately after Chandrayaan-3’s success, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said Aditya L-1 mission, aimed at studying the sun and observing solar activities, is getting ready at Sriharikota.

ISRO chief S Somanath, while talking to reporters after Chandrayaan-3’s soft landing, said, “The PM (Narendra Modi) congratulated all of us and said that he would like to personally come down and congratulate each one of us. ISRO’s next mission is Aditya L-1 mission which is getting ready at Sriharikota.”

Earlier this month, the space agency said PSLV-C57/Aditya-L1 Mission is getting ready for the launch and has arrived at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The spacecraft will have seven scientific payloads to study different parts of the Sun from different angles.

All About ADITYA-L1

Aditya L1 will be India’s debut mission to study the Sun is getting ready for the launch, which is likely to happen in the first week of September.

It will 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 stated on its website. The L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system, according to The Indian Express.

Placing the craft in the halo orbit around the L1 point will help the agency to view the Sun without any occultation or eclipses. It will observe the Sun from a close distance and gather information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.

The four payloads of Aditya L1 will directly view the Sun using the special vantage point L1, while the remaining three payloads will carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the L1 point, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium.

The mission will provide information to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc, according to ISRO website.

ADITYA-L1 Mission Objectives

1. Study of Solar upper atmospheric dynamics.
2. Study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionized plasma, initiation of the coronal mass ejections.
3. Observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment.
4. Physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism.
5. Development, dynamics and origin of solar magnetic force.
6. Magnetic field topology and magnetic field measurements in the solar corona
   Drivers for space weather.