One Year Completed Since the Launch of India's First Solar Mission Aditya L1 | Current Affairs | Vision IAS
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One Year Completed Since the Launch of India's First Solar Mission Aditya L1

Posted 05 Sep 2024

2 min read

The mission was launched by PLSV-C57 to observe the Sun from a halo orbit. 

  • It was inserted in its targeted halo orbit in January 2024. 

About Aditya-L1 Mission

  • Objectives: to understand:
    • Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration;
    • Initiation of Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), flares and near-earth space weather;
    • Solar wind distribution and temperature anisotropy etc.
  • Placed at Lagrangian point L1: Continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses, reduced fuel consumption etc. are the key advantages of L1. 
  • 7 payloads: Four payloads directly view the Sun and three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at L1, thus providing insights into the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in interplanetary medium. 
  • Lifespan: 5 years
  • Achievements: 
    • Captured images of Sun through payloads SUIT and VELC. 
    • Completion of First Halo Orbit in July. 
      • Aditya-L1 in the Halo orbit takes 178 days to complete a revolution around the L1 point.
    • Full validation for state-of-the-art flight dynamics software developed by U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) of ISRO for the Aditya-L1 missions.

Other Solar Missions

  • Hinotori (ASTRO-A) launched by Japan in 1980s.
  • Parker Solar Probe launched by US in 2018 (first spacecraft to “touch” the sun) 
  • Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO) mission launched Jointly by NASA-ESA (longest-lived Sun-watching satellite). 

About Lagrange points

  • At Lagrange points, gravitational pull of two large masses (like Sun and Earth) precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them. 
    • Thus, objects sent there tend to remain stationary.
  • Of the five Lagrange points, three (L1, L2, L3) are unstable and two (L4, L5) are stable.
  • Tags :
  • Aditya-L1
  • solar mission
  • Lagrange Point
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Simplified: Aditya-L1: India’s Solar Sojourn