Isro to provide next level of solar data to world with Aditya-L1: Prof

ISRO's solar mission Aditya-L1, which was launched on Saturday will demonstrate the extent of the country's capabilities and provide the world with the next level of solar data, stated Rukmini Jagirdar, Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Osmania University.

The professor said that with the launch of Aditya-L1, India is going to make a milestone in space exploration.

"This will show how far ISRO can go and prove its capability. This is the first time India is going to send a satellite to monitor the Sun in space. After many satellites from the US, Europe, and Japan, very few countries have explored the Sun," Jagirdar said while talking to ANI.

"India is going to be making a milestone. The lifetime of the satellites observing the sun right now is about to end. ISRO is going to provide the next level of data that the world is expecting," she added.

The PSLV-C57.1 rocket carrying the Aditya-L1 orbiter lifted off successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at 11.50 am today.

The successful launch of the maiden solar mission of the ISRO came on the heels of the historic lunar landing mission - Chandrayaan-3.

The ISRO successfully placed a lander on the unexplored lunar South Pole, a feat that put India in the record books as the first country to do so.According to the agency, the Aditya-L1 mission is expected to reach the observation point in four months.

It will be placed in a halo orbit around Lagrangian Point 1 (or L1), which is 1.5 million km away from the Earth in the direction of the sun. It will carry seven different payloads to have a detailed study of the sun, four of which will observe the light from the sun and the other three will measure in-situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.

The largest and technically most challenging payload on Aditya-L1 is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph or VELC.

VELC was integrated, tested, and calibrated at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics' CREST (Centre for Research and Education in Science Technology) campus in Hosakote in collaboration with ISRO.

This strategic location will enable Aditya-L1 to continuously observe the sun without being hindered by eclipses or occultation, allowing scientists to study solar activities and their impact on space weather in real-time. Also, the spacecraft's data will help identify the sequence of processes that lead to solar eruptive events and contribute to a deeper understanding of space weather drivers.

Major objectives of India's solar mission include the study of the physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism, the solar wind acceleration, coupling and dynamics of the solar atmosphere, solar wind distribution and temperature anisotropy, and origin of Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and flares and near-earth space weather.

According to the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics, the atmosphere of the sun, the corona, is what is seen during a total solar eclipse. A coronagraph like the VELC is an instrument that cuts out the light from the disk of the sun and can thus image the much fainter corona at all times.

Earlier, on August 23, India became the fourth country after the US, China, and Russia to have successfully placed a lander on the moon's surface.

After the historic touchdown, the 'Vikram' lander and the 'Pragyan' rover performed different set tasks on the lunar surface, including finding the presence of sulphur and recording relative temperature.

The stated objectives of Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar mission, were a safe and soft landing on the lunar surface, the rover moving on the moon's surface, and in-situ scientific experiments.

Chandrayaan-3 is the ISRO's follow-up attempt after the Chandrayaan-2 mission faced challenges during its soft landing on the lunar surface in 2019 and was eventually deemed to have failed its core mission objectives.