BENGALURU: On the heels of the success of the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing, India’s space agency has set a date for its next mission – this time to study the sun.
The Aditya-L1, India’s first space observatory for solar research, is getting ready for launch at the country’s main spaceport in Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told reporters at its satellite command centre this week, as scientists and crew celebrated the moon mission’s success.
“We are planning to launch in the first week of September,” said ISRO chairman S Somanath.
WHAT WILL ADITYA-L1 DO?
Named after the Hindi word for the sun, the spacecraft is India’s first space-based solar probe. It aims to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on earth and are commonly seen as “auroras”.
Longer term, data from the mission could help better understand the sun’s impact on earth’s climate patterns.
Recently, researchers said the European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft had detected numerous relatively small jets of charged particles expelled intermittently from the corona – the sun’s outer atmosphere – which could help shed light on the origins of solar wind.
Source: CNA
