Its been just few days that ISRO have seen the success of being the first country to land on the south pole of the moon. The Pragyan rover have just landed few days back and now ISRO is moving on with its highly anticipated mission. ISRO is planning to launch its sun mission of Aditya-L1.
When is this launch happening?
It was announce by ISRO that this highly anticipated mission which the first space based Indian Observatory to study the Sun from ISRO will be launched on September 2, 2023. The mission is going to be scheduled and launched at 11:50 IST from Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota.
If you love to watch this very fantastic moment you are welcomed to register yourself on ISRO’s official website to witness this mesmerizing moment of the launch of the PSLV-C57 rocket from the Launch View Gallery at Sriharikota.
How will this spacecraft work?
It is said that Aditya-L1 will travel for 1.4 million kilometers from earth in total which ultimately sums up to around four times to the distance of the moon. The first position of the spacecraft will be in a low earth orbit. In the later stage it will move on to be more elliptical to launch towards the Lagrange point (L1) using onboard propulsion.
The spacecraft will carry seven payloads to capture corona, chromosphere and photosphere in different wavebands. This mission will help ISRO observe and analyse the data on how Corona’s temperature can reach over a million degrees. Interestingly it is also seen that the Sun’s own temperature rises to over 6000 degrees centigrade.
After leaving the earth’s gravitational sphere of influence the craft will move on to a large halo orbit around L1. This whole set of this mission is expected to take a travel time of around four months starting from the launching to reaching to the L1 point. According to ISRO the spacecraft will have to travel a distance of 1.5 million kilometers to reach L1.
What is the main AIM of this mission?
There are few expected issues and data that ISRO is planning to collect through this mission. Some of the important data that ISRO is trying to gain firstly is o understand the Coronal heating problem; dynamics of space weather; pre-flare, flare activities and their characteristics; coronal mass ejection; propagation of particle and fields and many more other things.
The whole idea of this mission lies in understanding the whole structure of the sun. The sun’s is being mysterious to us in some ways which are yet to be reveals to the world. ISRO is trying to gain as much information as possible. The idea is to solve our problems and gain as much information possible. ISRO is aiming to find an understanding of Coronal heating, coupling and dynamics of solar atmosphere; solar wind acceleration; temperature anistropy and last but not the least solar wind distribution.
This mission was highly anticipated because of the risks present in the mission. The distance of the whole travel of the spacecraft is almost four times of that of lets say Chandrayan 3. The risks will be at its peak when the spacecraft leaves the earth’s gravitational sphere of influence. As the space craft move on towards L1, it will be injected into a large halo orbit. This orbit will be around our L1.
The mission consists of many other components like VELC payload made by our Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangaluru. It also include SUIT which was developed by our Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune. All this will equip the spacecraft to collect all the necessary data. The mission is expected to show results only after a long wait of four months and this countdown is going to start from 2nd September 2023.
Read Also: Chandrayaan-3: First Information on Temperature Profile of Lunar Soil