Moon mission done, ISRO aims for the Sun with Aditya-L1 launch on September 2

The mission Aditya-L1 from ISRO will travel for a total distance of 1.4 million kilometers from Earth, which is four times as far as the moon. First, the spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit, and then it will be made more elliptical to launch towards the Lagrange point (L1) using onboard propulsion.

🚀PSLV-C57/🛰️Aditya-L1 Mission:

The launch of Aditya-L1,
the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun ☀️, is scheduled for
🗓️September 2, 2023, at
🕛11:50 Hrs. IST from Sriharikota.

Citizens are invited to witness the launch from the Launch View Gallery at… pic.twitter.com/bjhM5mZNrx

— ISRO (@isro) August 28, 2023

Named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, Lagrange points are positions in space with enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion, produced by gravitational forces of the Sun and the Earth, which can be used for the propulsion of the spacecraft.

Aditya L1 mission will carry 7 payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and corona in different wavebands. The mission consists of a Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) payload designed and developed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bengaluru. Similarly, it also includes the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), developed by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune.

These will help ISRO to collect data on how Corona’s temperature can reach over a million degrees while the sun itself has a peak temperature of over 6000 degrees Centigrade.

“The SUITs of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide the most crucial information to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection (CME), pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc,” ISRO said.

As the spacecraft continues to travel towards L1, it will exit from the earth’s gravitational sphere of influence (SOI). During the cruise phase, the spacecraft will be injected into a large halo orbit around L1.

According to ISRO, this mission involves a total travel time of about four months from launch to L1 with a distance of 1.5 million kilometers.

The major objective of ISRO’s Aditya L1 mission is to get a deeper understanding of the sun, which includes coronal heating and solar wind acceleration, coupling and dynamics of the solar atmosphere, solar wind distribution and temperature anisotropy.