India Launches Aditya L1 Spacecraft To Study The Sun
The launch of Aditya-L1 by PSLV-C57 was conducted from the Satish Dhawan Space Cenre in Sriharikota on Saturday. The first Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#1) has been performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. The spacecraft’s new orbit is 245 km x 22459 km. The next maneuvre (EBN#2) is scheduled for September 5, 2023, around 03:00 Hrs. IST.
From ISRO: Aditya L1 shall be the first space based Indian mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft shall 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 the 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 the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time.
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
The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial informations 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.
