India’s Aditya-L1 Mission to Study the Sun

India has achieved a significant milestone with the successful launch of its groundbreaking Aditya L1 spacecraft on its inaugural solar mission. This remarkable accomplishment follows closely on the heels of India’s Chandrayaan-3 rover’s historic touchdown on the unexplored lunar south pole, a feat that marked India as the first nation to achieve such a landing.

The Aditya-L1 mission took off from the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, precisely at 11:50 am local time on a Saturday, corresponding to 06:20 GMT. Over the next four months, this spacecraft will journey an astonishing 1.5 million kilometers, equivalent to approximately 30,000 miles away from Earth.

During this voyage, the Aditya-L1 will circumnavigate Earth several times, ultimately positioning itself at Lagrange point 1, located precisely between the Sun and Earth. Here, it will remain in Earth’s orbit for a span of sixteen days, dedicated to observing the Solar corona and conducting in-situ examinations of the Solar wind at L1, also known as the Sun-Earth Lagrange point. These objectives represent just a portion of the mission’s extensive scientific goals.

India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi applauded the launch and team that made it possible, saying, “Our tireless scientific efforts will continue in order to develop a better understanding of the Universe for the welfare of entire humanity.”, the PM tweeted.

Jitrenda Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge), who witnessed the launch from the Mission Control Centre (MCC) dubbed it as a “Sunshine moment” for India, according to Mint. Similarly, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath who watched the launch of Aditya-L1 hailed the successful launch, took to X (formerly Twitter) saying, “Along with the Moon, now the Sun will also witness the power of ‘self-reliant India’. Hearty congratulations to the entire team including @isro!,”.

If India’s Lagrange point 1-bound spacecraft is successful in completing the task it has set out to do, India will join Japan, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US space agency, NASA as the select few that are already studying the sun.

What Aditya-L1 mission is

The objectives of the launch of Aditya L-1 in India’s Solar Mission, as reported by livemint.com, are as follows:

• Study of Solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics.
• Observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment.
• Study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionized plasma, initiation of the corona mass ejections, and flares.
• Diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: Temperature, velocity and density.
• Development, dynamics and origin of CMEs.
• 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
• Physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism