SPACE — India’s Aditya-L1 mission officially begins on Monday, September 2, 2023, when he completely removes himself from Earth’s sphere of influence. The spacecraft will begin a four-month journey to the center of the solar system, carrying instruments to observe the outer layers of our sun.
“The spacecraft has escaped Earth’s influence,” said the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in a statement on Saturday, September 30, evening.
Aditya, named after the Hindu sun god, has traveled 920,000 kilometers. That’s only half of the total distance traveled.
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. It’s where today’s most powerful telescope, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope maps the deep sky.
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At that point, the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun disappears, so the mission remains in a stable halo orbit around our nearest star. “This is the second time in a row that ISRO has sent a spacecraft beyond Earth’s sphere of influence, the first being the Mars Orbiter Mission,” the agency said.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and outer layer of the Sun (corona). Using L1’s special viewing point, four of its instruments will look directly at the Sun, while the other three study particles and fields in-situ.
For missions to the center of the solar system, the United States and the European Space Agency have sent probes several times. Missions to the Sun began with NASA’s Pioneer program in the 1960s.
Japan and China have both launched solar observatory missions. However, their probe was only placed in Earth orbit
If ISRO’s latest mission is successful, India will become the first Asian country to reach the sun. Then, put the spacecraft in orbit around the sun.
Last August, India also became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s largely unexplored south pole. This mission also makes it the fourth country to land on the moon.
The Pragyan rover robot, which accompanies the Vikram spacecraft to the moon, has been observing the area around its landing site. However, he was forced to shut down temporarily to face the night on the moon. For your information, one night on the moon is the same as two weeks on Earth, and vice versa during the day.
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India hopes to extend the Vikram and Pragyan missions by reactivating them after sunrise. However, these efforts have so far been unsuccessful. Both of them remained silent.
2023-10-01 18:03:00
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