"ISRO’s Aditya L1 Mission: A New Frontier in Solar Exploration"
Introduction
Aditya-L1, a mission to study the sun, is being launched by India into space just days after Chandrayaan-3, the nation's moon rover project, landed successfully.
The polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-XL) will be used to launch Aditya-L1 at 11:20 PM PT on September 1 (11:50 AM IST on September 2) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, South India, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) stated on Monday.
After launch, the spacecraft will take roughly 109 days to travel the 933,000 miles to the Lagrange point 1 (L1), which is between the sun and Earth.
Through the Aditya-L1 mission, ISRO hopes to get a better understanding of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare, and flare activity, as well as their properties, the dynamics of space weather, and the transmission of particles and fields. Four remote sensing payloads are among the numerous science, observation, and experiment packages that make up the 3,300-pound satellite.
Aditya-L1, also known as PSLV-C57, is a spacecraft that is designed to carry out a number of scientific investigations, including those into the dynamics of the solar upper atmosphere, chromospheric and coronal heating, on-site particle and plasma environments, and the physics of the solar corona and its heating process. Additionally, the mission seeks to pinpoint the causes of space weather.
Aditya-L1 was initially designed as Aditya (the Hindi word for "sun") in 2008 in order to research the solar corona or the topmost layer of the sun's atmosphere. However, ISRO eventually changed the mission's name to Aditya L-1 in order to broaden its focus and envision it as a fully functional observatory for researching solar and extraterrestrial environments.
Although there haven't been any updates on the mission's expenditures, the Indian government has aside roughly $46 million for the Aditya-L1 mission in 2019.
The space agency attracted headlines last week when Chandrayaan-3, the mission it launched in July to replace Chandrayaan-2, which crashed in 2019, made a successful landing. India became the fourth nation worldwide to make a soft landing on the moon, behind the former Soviet Union, the United States, and China, thanks to the astounding accomplishment of the spacecraft.
The
spacecraft will travel 1.5 million km from Earth in a four-month journey to
study the Sun's activities. Aditya L1 aims to study the Sun from an orbit
around the L1 Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system. The spacecraft will be
placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth
system, which is about 1.5 million km from Earth. 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 solar activities and their effect on space weather in real time.
What
is the L1 Lagrange point?
The
L1 Lagrange point is a point in space where the gravitational forces of two
large bodies, such as the Earth and the Sun, balance. At this point, the
gravitational pull of the Earth is equal and opposite to that of the Sun, which
allows a spacecraft to maintain a stable position relative to both bodies.
Why
would Aditya L1 be placed at the L1 point between the Sun and Earth?
Simply
put, the Aditya L1 spacecraft will be placed in a large halo orbit around the
Sun-Earth Lagrange L1 point, as it will
allow continuous observation of the Sun without any occlusion. or a solar
eclipse. To explain scientifically, let's understand the Lagrange point.
According to ISRO, at the Lagrange point, the gravitational force of two large bodies is equal to the centripetal force required for a small body to move with them.
For the two-body gravitational system, there are a total of five Lagrange points denoted L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5. The Lagrange points of the Solar-Earth system are shown in Fig.
The
Aditya L1 mission is expected to last for five years. During this time, the
spacecraft will study various aspects of the Sun’s corona, chromosphere, and
photosphere from an orbit around the L1 Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system.
The mission will carry seven payloads that will study different aspects of the
Sun’s atmosphere and magnetic field. The Aditya L1 mission is expected to
provide valuable insights into space weather and its impact on Earth’s climate
and communication systems.
How
will Aditya L1 help in space weather forecasting?
Aditya
L1 is India’s first space-based observatory to study the Sun. The spacecraft is
planned to be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1), around
1.5 million km from the Earth, of the Sun-Earth system. The mission aims to
study solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics, chromospheric
and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionized plasma, initiation of the
coronal mass ejections, and flares.
The
Aditya L1 mission will provide 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 particles and
fields, etc. This understanding will lead to more precise forecasts of space
weather and offer important perspectives on reducing their potential effects on
space missions and technologies on Earth.
The
Aditya L1 mission will carry seven payloads that will study various aspects of
the Sun's corona, chromosphere, and photosphere. The payloads include:
- A
coronagraph that will study the outermost layers of the Sun's atmosphere.
- A solar ultraviolet imaging telescope that will capture images of the Sun's chromosphere and photosphere.
- A magnetometer that will measure magnetic fields on the Sun's surface.
Significance
The
Aditya L1 mission is expected to provide valuable insights into space weather
and its impact on Earth's climate and communication systems. It is also
expected to help scientists better understand solar flares and coronal mass
ejections, which can have a significant impact on Earth's power grids and
communication systems.
What's
unique about Aditya L1?
According
to ISRO, the mission is:
Onboard
intelligence helps detect CMEs and solar flares to optimize data volumes and
observations.
The
solar disk is spatially resolved for the first time in the near UV range
The
dynamics of the CME being close to the solar disk (~from 1.05 solar radii) and
thus providing information about the accelerated mode of the CME are not
consistently observed.
Energy
anisotropy and orientation of the solar wind using omnidirectional
observations.
Why study the Sun from Space?
The Sun is the largest object in our solar system and the nearest star to Earth. It is an approximately 4.5 billion-year-old hot ball of hydrogen and helium gases. Since the Sun is the closest star, careful research of it can reveal eruptive thermal and magnetic phenomena that, if directed at the Earth, could produce serious disruptions in the near-Earth space environment.
The core of the Sun is the hottest part with a
temperature of up to 15 million degrees Celsius. This is where nuclear fusion
occurs, the process that powers the giant star. The Sun's visible surface,
known as the photosphere, is much cooler, with a temperature of about 5,500
degrees Celsius.
The
sun releases huge amounts of energy into the solar system in the form of a
number of harmful radiation and light of different wavelengths, which however
cannot reach the Earth's surface due to the planet's atmosphere and magnetic
field. crystals play a protective role. shield. This is why various
ground-based instruments cannot detect such solar activity. Therefore, the
Aditya L1 mission will perform such studies from space, far away from the
influence of the Earth's magnetic field.
In
conclusion, ISRO's Aditya L1 mission is an exciting new development in India's
space program. The mission aims to study the Sun from an orbit around the L1
Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system and will carry seven payloads that will
study various aspects of the Sun's corona, chromosphere, and photosphere. The
mission is expected to provide valuable insights into space weather and its
impact on Earth's climate and communication systems.
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Dr. Mayank Chandrakar is a writer also. My first book "Ayurveda Self Healing: How to Achieve Health and Happiness" is available on Kobo and Instamojo. You can buy and read.
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