ISRO on Monday announced that Aditya-L1, India's inaugural space-based observatory designed for Sun research, is nearing its launch preparations.
The satellite, crafted at the U R Rao Satellite Centre, has arrived at ISRO's Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, as stated in the mission update. In response to the launch date, an ISRO official informed PTI that it's expected to occur mostly during the first week of September.
The plan is for the spacecraft to be positioned in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, situated approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has a major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses, ISRO noted. "This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time," it said.
The satellite is equipped with seven payloads designed for observing various layers of the Sun, including the photosphere, chromosphere, and corona. These payloads consist of electromagnetic, particle, and magnetic field detectors.
Utilising the unique L1 vantage point, four of these payloads will directly observe the Sun. The remaining three payloads will conduct in-situ studies of particles and fields at the L1 position, contributing valuable scientific insights into how solar dynamics propagate through the interplanetary medium.
"The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial information to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc.," ISRO said.
The major science objectives of the Aditya-L1 mission encompass studying the dynamics of solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona); study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionised plasma, initiation of the coronal mass ejections, and flares; observing the in-situ particle and plasma environment providing data for the study of particle dynamics from the Sun; physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism; diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: temperature, velocity and density; development, dynamics and origin of coronal mass ejections; identify the sequence of processes that occur at multiple layers (chromosphere, base and extended corona) which eventually leads to solar eruptive events; magnetic field topology and magnetic field measurements in the solar corona; drivers for space weather (origin, composition and dynamics of solar wind).
The instruments of Aditya-L1 are tuned to observe the solar atmosphere, mainly the chromosphere and corona, while the in-situ instruments will observe the local environment at L1.
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