Chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), S Somanath, announced on Monday that the final maneuver for Aditya L1, the country’s first solar mission, to reach its goal, the L1 point, is scheduled for January 6.
On the fringes of the launch of ISRO’s first Xray mission, XPoSat, to research black holes, Somanath told news agency ANI that Aditya-L1 will reach its L1 point on January 6 at 4 pm and that we will execute the last maneuver to hold it there.
When the spaceship gets to its location, it will be able to see the sun without any eclipses.
Since its September 2 launch last year, the spacecraft has completed four earthbound maneuvers and one Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) maneuver.
According to an earlier statement from the chairman of ISRO, the space agency would gently use the Aditya L1 engine to place the craft in an orbit known as the halo.
He stated that all six payloads are “working beautifully” after testing and providing excellent data.
After the insertion, the satellite will be doomed to stare at the Sun indefinitely, if its internal electronics are functional and able to transmit data. We want to learn a great deal about the relationship between the solar corona and mass ejection, as well as how it affects the space weather that we deal with daily, says Somanath.
On September 2, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft was successfully launched by ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C57) from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft was successfully launched into an elliptical orbit of 235×19500 kilometers around the Earth that day after a mission of 63 minutes and 20 seconds.
Aditya-L1, India’s first space-based observatory, is observing the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located around 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
The point where the gravitational force of the sun and earth cancels out is known as the Lagrange point. Complete neutralization is unattainable due to the existence of other bodies such as the Moon, Mars, and Venus.
Aditya-L1 carried seven in-house scientific payloads developed by national research laboratories and ISRO. The payloads are equipped with magnetic field and electromagnetic particle detectors to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun, known as the corona.
Important scientific studies of the propagation effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium are provided by the remaining three payloads, which conduct in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, while the remaining four payloads use the unique vantage position L1 to see the Sun directly.
The Indian Space Scientific Organisation (ISRO) and several other Indian scientific organizations conceived and produced the coronagraphy spacecraft Aditya-L1 to examine the solar atmosphere. It will be studying the solar atmosphere, solar magnetic storms, and their effects on the Earth’s surroundings while in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1), which is located between the Earth and the Sun, at a distance of roughly 1.5 million km.
This is the inaugural Indian mission devoted to solar observation. The director of the project is Nigar Shaji. On September 2, 2023, at 11:50 IST, Aditya-L1 was launched aboard the PSLV C57, 10 days following the successful landing of ISRO’s Moon mission, Chandrayaan-3. About an hour later, it successfully entered the orbit it was aiming for, and at 12:57 IST, it separated from its fourth stage. It is expected to arrive at the L1 point on January 6, 2024, at approximately 4 p.m., to begin its assigned orbit.
Aditya-L1’s primary goals are:
- To watch the chromosphere and corona dynamics of the Sun
- To investigate flare exchanges, the physics of partly ionized plasma, the coronal magnetic field and heat transfer mechanisms, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and their origins, and chromospheric and coronal heating.
- To keep an eye on the surrounding physical particle environment.
- To ascertain the order in which events in various layers underneath the corona culminate in solar outbursts.
- To research solar wind dynamics, composition, and origin as well as space weather.