Mission Aditya-L1: Aditya L1 is the first solar mission of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Which is going to be launched tomorrow from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. ISRO will launch the spacecraft at 11.50 a.m., days after the historic success of Chandrayaan-3, which landed on the Moon’s South Pole last Wednesday.
The space agency explained that with Aditya L1, ISRO aims to place a halo orbit around the Lagrange Point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system. Which is about 1.5 million km from Earth. Through this mission, ISRO will study the impact of solar activity on space weather in real time.
“Other key objectives of this unmanned mission include understanding coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particles and fields,” they added.
According to ISRO, the journey to the designated mission site is 1.5 million km from Earth and will take about four months to cover. Meanwhile, ISRO explained on its website that the spacecraft will initially be placed in a low Earth orbit.
ISRO said that, “Subsequently, the orbit will be made more elliptical and later the spacecraft will be sent towards the Lagrange point L1 using on-board propulsion”. While travelling towards L1, Aditya L1 will escape the influence of Earth’s gravitational field. During this, the “cruise phase” will begin and the spacecraft will be inserted into a large halo orbit around L1. The total travel time from launch to L1 for Aditya-L1 will take about four months.
Lagrange points are locations in space where the gravitational forces of two celestial bodies (like the Sun-Earth) create pockets of gravitational equilibrium. This allows the spacecraft to stay in one position without burning fuel.
A system like the Earth-Sun system has five Lagrange points – L1 to L5. The L1 and L2 points, closest to the planet, serve as good locations for observational studies. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the famous Hubble Telescope, is stationed at L2.
