The launch date of the first Indian solar mission, Aditya-L1 mission, has been announced by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission is said to be launched on September 2.
Aditya-L1 is India’s first space-based observatory-class solar mission to study the sun.
It will be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is 1.5-million-km from Earth.
A satellite placed in L1 point has a great advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any eclipse. For continuously observing the solar activities, this will be a great advantage.
For observing the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) with the help of electromagnetic and particle detectors, the spacecraft will be carrying seven payloads.
Using L1’s special viewpoint, four payloads will be directly viewing the Sun while the other three payloads will conduct in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1.
As per ISRO, the suit of Aditya-L1 payloads have been expected to provide most crucial information for understanding the problems of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities, and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, study of the propagation of particles, fields in the interplanetary medium, etc.