We have lift-off: Time for India’s place in the sun
Mint looks at the need to study the sun, Aditya L1’s objectives and what others have done to study our nearest star. Yes. After becoming the first nation in the world to soft-land an object at the South Pole of the moon, the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) is all set to probe the sun—the largest object in our solar system.
Aditya L1, India’s first space-based solar mission, is set to blast off from Sriharikota on 2 September at 11.50 am. The spacecraft, which is carrying as many as seven payloads, will be launched using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. It will take 120 days for the spacecraft to reach its intended home—a halo orbit around the Lagrange point L1, some 1.5 million km from the earth.
The sun is the closest star to the earth at 150 million km away. This hot glowing mass of hydrogen and helium gases is the source of energy for the earth. The sun also frequently registers several eruptive phenomena such as coronal mass ejections.
These, along with solar winds, can cause disturbances to the earth’s magnetic field. Changes in space weather can impact our space assets such as satellites. An early warning of such disturbances helps to take preventive action.
The sun is also a natural laboratory to study extreme thermal and magnetic phenomena which cannot be replicated on the earth. Lagrange-1 is a point between Earth and the sun where the gravitational pull of the two bodies is such that the spacecraft will remain in the same position without spending too much fuel. Once Aditya L1 reaches its final orbit, it can view the sun continuously.
It has payloads to study coronal heating, coronal mass ejections, space weather, particles and fields. All seven payloads have been built indigenously. The visible
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