Following Chandrayaan-3’s successful moon landing, the Indian space agency has set a date for its next mission — this time to study the sun.
Aditya-L1, India’s first space observatory for solar research, is preparing to launch from the country’s main spaceport in Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) told reporters at its satellite command center this week, scientists and the crew are celebrating the mission. The success of the mission to the moon.
“We plan to launch in the first week of September,” said ISRO chairman S Somanath.
What will Aditya-L1 do?
The spacecraft, named after the Hindi word for sun, is India’s first solar probe in space. Its purpose is to study the solar wind, which causes disturbances on Earth, often referred to as “auroras.”
In the long run, the mission’s data could help to better understand the sun’s influence on Earth’s climate patterns.
Recently, researchers said that the European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter detected many relatively small jets of charged particles that are intermittently ejected from the corona (the sun’s outer atmosphere), which may help Unraveling the origin of the solar wind.
How far will it travel?
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft will travel 1.5 million kilometers in about four months aboard India’s heavy launch vehicle PSLV to study the Sun’s atmosphere.
It will head to a parking lot in space, where objects tend to stay in place due to the balance of gravity, reducing the spacecraft’s fuel consumption.
These locations are known as Lagrange points, named after the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange.
How much does the task cost?
In 2019, the government approved about $46 million (nearly Rs. 3.8 billion) in funding for the Aditya-L1 mission. ISRO has not yet provided an official update on the cost.
The Indian space agency has built a reputation for world-class cost competitiveness in aerospace engineering, which executives and planners expect will boost its now-privatized space industry.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which lands a spacecraft on the lunar south pole, has a budget of about $75 million (nearly Rs. 6.2 billion).
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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