ISRO Aditya L1 mission live: The PSLV rocket taking off. (ISRO via YouTube)Aditya L1 mission launch highlights: The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched atop the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 11:50 AM IST today. Little more than an hour into launch, the Aditya L1 satellite separated from the launch vehicle.
🚀 Aditya L1 mission
The Aditya L1 mission will take an approach similar to the Chandrayaan-3 mission. It will first get into an Earth orbit and from there, it will go higher and faster until it eventually puts itself on a path to its final halo orbit around the first Lagrange point (L1) of the Earth and the Sun. The Lagrange point is a convenient vantage point for the probe because being around it would mean that it can remain in the same position without using a lot of fuel. This is also why the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) placed the James Webb Space Telescope at the second Lagrange point. (L2)
🌞 ISRO solar mission’s objective
The Aditya L1 mission will carry seven payloads to orbit to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and outermost layers of the Sun’s atmosphere (corona) using electromagnetic, particle and magnetic field detectors. But why must we study the sun? Well, disturbances in the form of solar flares, Coronal Mass Ejection, or solar winds directed towards Earth, can adversely impact space weather; and studying the Sun is, therefore, of paramount importance.
Off the back of a successful launch on the PSLV rocket, the Aditya L1 mission now has a 120-day mission ahead of it. In those four months, the spacecraft will first raise its orbit around Earth multiple times till it is in position to leave Earth's sphere of influence. After that exit manoeuvre, it will cruise towards the L1 Lagrange point till it reaches nearby and puts itself in a halo orbit around it.
Meet Nigar Shaji, ISRO project director for the Aditya L1 mission.
Here is how the Aditya L1 satellite separated from the PSLV rocket's upper stage, making the launch successful.
While speaking after the launch of the Aditya L1 mission, ISRO chairman S Somanath announced that the Chandrayaan-3 mission's Pragyan rover covered a distance of 100 metres on the Moon. The space agency will now put the rover and lander to sleep in preparation for the lunar night.
As the Aditya L1 satellite separated from the upper stage of the PSLV rocket, the mission has been deemed a success by ISRO chairman S Somanath.
All the conditions for the satellite to be injected into an eccentric Earth-bound orbit have been achieved and the Aditya L1 spacraft will soon enter the first of many Earth orbits before it heads to the L1 Lagrange point.
The range operations director has confirmed that the second burn of the PS4 stage has commenced.
“India is the third country to have a mission at L1. It is multi-wavelength, multi-instrument and multi-direction. You don’t have such a satellite existing in L1 point so far,” said Anil Bharadwaj, Director of Physical Research Laboratory, while speaking after the launch.
In this video, you can see how the PSLV rocket launched the Aditya L1 mission and put it on its path to the first Lagrange point.
The Aditya L1 mission successfully took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota atop a PSLV rocket. Here are some of the things ISRO hopes to learn using the mission's science instruments:
In this post on the platform X, formerly Twitter, you can watch the PSLV rocket launching the Aditya L1 mission.
The third stage of the PSLV rocket successfully separated from the rocket. It is now in the PS4 coasting phase.
Mission control announced that vehicle performance was normal as it was at an altitude of 185 kilometres above Earth's surface.
The second stage of the PSLV rocket has separated and the third stage has begun performing. It is working as intended, according to mission control.
The first stage has separated from the rocket and the second stage has initiated. The second stage of the PSLV rocket is performing normally.
The first stage of the PSLV rocket for the mission is performing normally, according to mission control.
The Aditya L1 mission launched on the PSLV rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota.
The weather in Sriharikota today is dry and hot, and the sky is clear, providing ideal conditions for launch, according to the Meteorological department at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota.
India's first space-based solar observation mission, Aditya L1, is set to launch. External power supplies to the launch vehicle have been withdrawn and the automated launch sequence will launch PSLV in five minutes.
The mission director has authorised the mission for launch as all systems are working as intended and conditions are favourable for launch. The automatic launch sequence has begun.
The PSLV rocket will launch the Aditya L1 spacecraft into a highly eccentric Earth-bound orbit. From there, it will use its Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) to perform orbit manoeuvres that take it further and further away from the planet’s surface. Then, it will put itself on a path that takes it away from Earth’s sphere of influence before cruising to a halo orbit around the first Lagrange point (L1).
Aditya L1 will be ISRO’s first mission to a Lagrange point. But L1 is a tricky place to fly to in space. In order to get there and stay there, the spacecraft will require regular, precise manoeuvres. The Indian space agency has developed new “orbit determination” software to let operators know the exact location of the spacecraft and its orbit. The room for operator errors i very small, and the slightest mistake could throw the mission in jeopardy. ISRO worked with the European Space Agency to fine-tune the software and its algorithms.
This post on X, formerly Twitter, presents visuals from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
This is how PSLV, ISRO's workhorse rocket that carried Chandrayaan-1 and Mangalyaan, will launch the Aditya L1 mission to a highly-eccentric Earth-bound orbit.
These are the all-important science instruments that are payloads on ISRO's Aditya L1 mission.
The Sun is really really far away from our planet—about 150 million kilometres away. But activity on the Sun can change space weather and this can potentially create havoc on Earth. Geomagnetic storms caused by the star can cause power outages and even damage satellites in Earth's orbit.
But how? The Sun’s extremely hot outer atmosphere is constantly spewing out streams of particles into space; what we call solar wind. These electrically charged particles can speed towards Earth as fast as 1.6 million kilometres per hour. While one pleasant side effect of such winds on Earth is the beautiful auroras, they can also disrupt and damage electronic systems while also posing a threat to astronauts in space.
Despite being the source of nearly all the energy on Earth, there are many things that we do not know about the Sun. These are some of the things that ISRO aims to do with India’s first solar observatory in space:
The Aditya L1 mission will be the 59th mission for PSLV and the 25th that uses the PSLV-XL configuration. The launch vehicle is known as ISRO’s workhorse since most of the space agency’s missions were launched with it. The XL configuration was first used for Chandrayaan-1 and has been used for other missions like Mangalyaan. It is fitted with six strap-on motors to augment the thrust provided by the first stage, the maximum for this vehicle.
The first Lagrange point (L1) offers an uninterrupted view of the Sun, which is why ISRO selected a halo orbit around it for Aditya L1. But it won’t be the only solar probe orbiting the point—Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, (SOHO) a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) has been orbiting L1 since as far back as 1996.
Although it was originally planned as a two-year mission, it has been extended to go on till 2025. The space observatory’s 12 instruments have been sending back important science data for nearly three decades.
The Aditya-L1 mission, launching on Saturday, will take India into an elite group of nations that have sent probes to study the Sun. While India has carried out experiments to study the Sun using satellites earlier, Aditya-L1, which aims to park a spacecraft in the ‘L1’ spot in space (see box and illustration), is the country’s first dedicated solar mission.
Why must we study the Sun? Disturbances in the form of solar flares, Coronal Mass Ejection, or solar winds directed towards Earth, can adversely impact space weather; studying the Sun is, therefore, of paramount importance.
The objectives: -- The four remote sensing instruments will probe the solar sources and try to identify the source regions with greater focus — an edge over all predecessor solar missions. This could help better understand the origins of solar eruptions or flares.
--The mission hopes to generate user-friendly information that can help safeguard a range of satellite-dependent operations such as telecommunications, mobile-based Internet services, navigation, power grids, etc. Once tested, tailormade information obtained from the data can be used to issue space weather alerts.
Read more.
An international group of experts working with NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) announced in 2020 that the solar minimum occurred in December 2019, marking the beginning of Solar Cycle 25.
Solar minimum is far behind us and scientists expect the star’s activity to ramp up towards the next predicted maximum in July 25. This solar cycle is expected to be as strong as the last one. That one was a below-average cycle but that does not mean there are no risks. Back here on Earth, solar storms and activity can affect power systems, radio communication systems and technologies dependent on satellite communication, among others.
But for an organisation like ISRO, which has ambitions to send crewed missions to space, there is another pressing concern—the risk that solar activity could pose to astronauts in space. Missions like Aditya L1 can help scientists study the Sun in better detail and help prepare for space weather risks.
When there are two huge masses like the Sun and Earth, there are five special points where a small mass can orbit around the two in a constant pattern. These points are named Lagrange points in honour of Josephy-Louis Lagrange, an Italian-French mathematician.
At the Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of the two large masses is just about equal to the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them. Three Lagrange points—L1, L2, and L3—are stable while the others—L4 and L5—are stable. You can see their positions in the diagram from NASA below.
The L1 point offers an unobstructed view of the Sun, which is why ISRO selected it for Aditya L1 to orbit. The L1 point is unstable on a time scale of roughly 23 days. This means that satellites orbiting it will have to undergo course and attitude changes often to stay there.
Hello and welcome to our live blog! We will be tracking the launch of ISRO's ambitous Aditya L-1 mission to probe the sun.
Here are some facts about the mission and its goals, to get the ball rolling:
?Aditya-L1 will stay approximately 1.5 million km away from Earth, directed towards the Sun, which is about 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.
?The Sun is a giant sphere of gas and Aditya-L1 would study the outer atmosphere of the Sun.
?Aditya-L1 will neither land on the Sun nor approach the Sun any closer.
Here is how PSLV will launch the Aditya L1 solar probe if all goes well.
After launching on the PSLV rocket, the Aditya L1 mission will get into an Earth orbit. From there, it will make its orbit more and more eccentric, increasing its distance from the planet’s surface with each manoeuvre. After that, it will put itself on a path to exit Earth’s sphere of influence before a cruise phase. Finally, it will enter a halo orbit around L1.
One of the main payloads of the Aditya L1 mission is SUIT (Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope), which took over ten years to develop. It is meant to conduct ultraviolet imaging of the photosphere and chromosphere, two of the four outer layers of the Sun.
“What is going to follow the launch (on Saturday) is about four months of orbit transfers and travel to reach the Lagrangian Point L1, after which an insertion into the halo orbit will take place. Once there, the payloads, including SUIT, will be switched on,” said Sreejith Padinhatteeri, an assistant professor at the Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education in Manipal, to The Indian Express. Sreejith, who continues as project scientist of SUIT, got associated with the IUCAA ( Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics)team in developing SUIT in 2017.
ISRO announced Wednesday that the internal vehicle checks and launch rehearsal with PSLV is complete.
American space agency NASA has the Sun under observation 24-seven, observing everything from its turbulent surface to its hazy atmosphere and even its insides using helioseismic and magnetic instruments. It uses missions like the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscope Imager, the joint ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, and the joint JAXA/NASA Hinode. In 2018, NASA plans to launch two more sun observers: Solar Probe Plus and the European Space Agency/NASA's Solar Orbiter to peer at the Sun all the time.
Aditya L1 is not the first solar probe since there have been many before it, mostly launched by NASA and the European Space Agency. The most famous one is probably NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. It is touted as humanity’s first ever mission that “visited” a star. The spacecraft is about the size of a small car and can travel directly through the Sun’s atmosphere. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 12, 2018.
Stars like the Sun make for active environments. They are made of super-hot ionised gas called plasma and both their surface and atmosphere change continuously. This change is partly driven by the magnetic forces that come from the constantly moving plasma. Studying the Sun is important because the ever-changing conditions of the star can influence the Earth, other planets and space itself.