The Indian space probe Aditya-L1, which will study the Sun, arrived this Saturday at its final destination 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, announced the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
“India has created yet another historic moment. India’s first solar observatory, Aditya-L1, has reached its destination,” declared Modi on social media, quoted by the Spanish agency EFE.
The probe was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in September 2023.
It was positioned at the first Lagrange point (L1), just 1% of the distance separating the two celestial bodies and chosen because it is gravitationally stable, since the gravitational forces of the Earth and the Sun cancel each other out.
The Indian Prime Minister stated that the Asian country will continue to explore “new frontiers of science for the benefit of humanity”.
The objective of the mission, successful as India prepares for the first manned mission to space in 2025, is to observe the Sun without being affected by eclipses or occultations.
The probe has seven instruments to examine the outer layers of the Sun, using electromagnetic and particle detectors and magnetic fields.
ISRO expects Aditya-L1 to remain in operation for about five years.
On December 6, the probe captured the first images, including the first full-disc representations of the Sun at wavelengths between 200 and 400 nanometers.
With this mission, India joins a select group of countries that have sent probes to study the Sun, including China, the United States, Japan, the former West Germany (in collaboration with NASA) and the European Space Agency. (ESA).
The European Solar Orbiter probe, launched in February 2020, studies the Sun just 48 million kilometers from the star, while NASA’s Parker Solar Probe made history in 2021 by flying through the Sun’s upper atmosphere (the corona).
2024-01-06 14:34:00
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