Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission, to lift off on Sept 2

As Vikram and Pragyan, the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover continue to do science on the Moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has set the date for the launch of its solar mission on September 2, reports Times of India. 

Aditya-L1 is the first space-based observatory-class Indian solar mission to study the Sun. It is planned to be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5-million-km from Earth.

A satellite placed in L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipse. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities continuously.

The spacecraft will carry seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle detectors. Using the special vantage point of L1, four payloads will directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads will carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1.

According to Isro: “The suit of Aditya-L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial information to understand the problems of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities, and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, study of the propagation of particles, fields in the interplanetary medium, etc.”