ISRO’s Aditya-L1 solar mission 2023
After the recent success of Chandrayaan-3, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is going to launch Aditya-L1 mission on 2 September.
Aditya – L1 will be India’s first mission to study the Sun. It will be launched from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
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 Earth.
Lagrange points are points in space where the gravitational forces of two-body systems (such as the Sun and Earth) produce such attraction and repulsion that a body remains stationary at this point.
Payloads: There are a total of seven payloads in this mission. Four of these are solar remote sensing payloads, while the other three will make in-situ observations of L1.
Objective:
It will study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds, solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME), and it will take pictures of the Sun around the clock.
Features of this mission:
- The CME will be measured from close to the solar surface (1.05 solar radii). This will give information about its acceleration system, which is not regularly observed.
- To observe the directional and energy anisotropy of the solar wind using multi-direction observations.
- Anisotropy refers to such a physical property of a body etc. that when it is measured from different directions, its different values are obtained.
- On-board intelligence to locate CMEs and solar flares for optimized observations and data volumes.
Significance of Aditya L1 Mission:
Will provide important information about the following:
- Coronal heating problem,
- Pre-solar flare conditions and solar flare related activities and their characteristics,
- space weather dynamics,
- Propagation of particles and fields etc.
Source – Indian Express
