India to launch Aditya-L1 spacecraft to study the Sun on Sept.2

After the Moon, it is the Sun for the Indian space agency. Days after landing India on the Moon safely, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be launching the country’s first space-based observatory called Aditya-L1 to study the Sun at 11:50am on Sept.2.

The Indian space agency has invited public to register in order to view the proposed launch from the gallery at the Sriharikota space port in Andhra Pradesh.

The Aditya-L1 - named after the Sun God in Hindu mythology - will be carried by the Indian rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-XL variant (PSLV-XL), the ISRO said.

Initially, Aditya-L1 will be ejected in a low earth orbit (LEO). Then the orbit will be elliptical. As the spacecraft travels towards L1, it will exit the earth’s gravitational Sphere of Influence (SOI).

After exit from SOI, the cruise phase will start and subsequently the spacecraft will be injected into a large halo orbit around L1.

The total travel time from launch to L1 would take about four months for Aditya-L1 and the distance will be about 1.5 million km from the Earth.

The distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 3,84,000 km.

"A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time,” the ISRO said.

According to the ISRO, the spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors.

"Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium," it said.

Aditya-L1’s seven 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 and others, the Indian space agency said.

The ISRO said the major science objectives of Aditya-L1 mission are: Study of solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics, study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionised plasma, and initiation of the coronal mass ejections, and flares.

It will also observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment providing data for the study of particle dynamics from the Sun.

Other objectives are physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism, the diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: Temperature, velocity and density, development, dynamics and origin of Coronal Mass Ejections (CME), to 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, and the drivers for space weather (origin, composition and dynamics of solar wind).

Indo-Asian News Service