Aditya L1 Launch Live Updates: India’s solar mission to lift-off shortly

admin September 2, 2023

ISRO Aditya L1 Launch Live Updates: The Indian Space Research Organisation is all set to launch its ambitious maiden mission to study the Sun. The Aditya L1 mission is scheduled to launch from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Saturday on a four-month-long journey to its destination, Lagrange Point 1.

Watch live launch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IcgGYZTXQw

India is set to launch its first mission to the Sun this morning, just days after becoming the first country in history to achieve a soft landing of a spacecraft on the Moon’s uncharted south pole.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is an unmanned observation satellite that India’s space agency (Isro) wants to use to monitor the Sun’s activities, and learn more about how these impact space weather phenomena such as solar storms.

The launch is scheduled for 11.50am local time (7.20am BST) on Saturday morning and will take place at the same space centre in Sriharikota in southern India where the country’s historic Chandrayaan-3 moon mission was launched.

ISRO says it will take Aditya – which means Sun in Hindi – around four months to reach its final position in a halo orbit around the Sun. It will first enter Low Earth Orbit before taking a more elliptical path and finally use onboard propulsion to push out into a region around the Sun known as the Lagrange Point 1 (L1).

L1 is located around 1.5 million km away from Earth and will allow Aditya a continuous and unobstructed view of the Sun.

But will Aditya-L1 “land” on the Sun?

The Aditya-L1 Mission will not “land” on the Sun as the blazing temperatures would make it an impossible task. It, however, will be placed in the orbit of the Sun-Earth system. The spacecraft will carry seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic particle and magnetic field detectors.