India Successfully Launches Its Satellite to Observe the Sun from Space for the First Time

India has recently become the first country to successfully land on the south side of the Moon. The country, which progressed very quickly in the space race, did what countries such as Russia could not do in the near future with the said Moon mission.

After the successful Chandrayaan-3 (name of lunar mission) mission, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) turned its attention to the Sun. In this context, the Aditya-L1 mission has been around for a while. The observation vehicle, which will be the main focus of the mission, was successfully launched on Saturday, September 2 at 9:20 am.

You can watch the launch here:

It will take approximately 4 months to reach the targeted position.

According to Isro, Aditya will enter low earth orbit first. It will then follow an elliptical orbit and push itself to the Lagrange 1 point (L1). Between this end point and our planet is 1.5 million kilometers. When it reaches the L1 point, the spacecraft named Aditya will be able to see the Sun without any obstacle in front of it.

But what is the purpose of this mission?

Robert Lea

The Aditya-L1 mission will allow scientists to learn more broadly about the effect of solar radiation on thousands of orbiting satellites. Rama Rao Nidamanuri of the Indian Space Research Organization says it is very crowded with satellites, especially in low earth orbit.

Aditya, after which the mission is named, means Sun in Sanskrit. Thanks to this mission, Isro will be able to view the Sun from space for the first time. This means they can observe events such as solar storms in real time. In addition, since all the rays of the Sun do not reach our planet, certain radiations are not caught by the observation instruments on the planet. Since Aditya will be in space, he will also observe these rays. So roughly, it will observe the Sun.

As we mentioned before, there is approximately 1.5 million km between Aditya and the L1 point of its target. But when this distance is exceeded, a clear and unobstructed Sun image will be waiting for him.