2023-09-02 11:06:00
A week following Chandrayaan-3 landed on the Moon, the Indian space agency launched a rocket carrying Aditya-L1, the first Indian mission dedicated to observing the Sun.
The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, wants to promote a new technological boom in the country, but this time highlighting the field of space exploration, according to a government official quoted by the Archyde.com news agency. The efforts of the Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, show that the country is committed to being recognized as a power in the sector.
O Aditya-L1 must travel 1.5 million kilometers over four months to reach the Lagrange Point L1, located between the Sun and Earth. This point can be defined as a place of balance between two massive celestial bodies, where objects tend to remain static, minimizing the fuel consumption of a spacecraft. It must stay in orbit to collect data that scientists hope will help them understand why the Sun’s corona is hotter than its surface.
Scientists hope the mission will provide insight into how solar radiation and various solar phenomena affect communication systems, satellites and power grids. By understanding these effects, companies and space agencies can better protect satellites in orbit.
For example, if scientists can predict coronal mass ejections, they can alert operators to shut down power to their satellites before the phenomenon occurs. Furthermore, scientists hope that Aditya-L1 will shed light on the behavior of the solar wind and how solar activity can influence Earth’s climate in the long term.
Sankar Subramanian, lead scientist on the mission, said: “We guarantee that we will have a unique dataset that is currently not available from any other mission. This will allow us to understand the sun, its dynamics, as well as the inner heliosphere, which is an important element for current technology and for aspects of space weather.”
India already has several other missions planned for the coming year, such as a collaboration with Japan to send a lander and an unmanned rover to explore the south pole region of the Moon by 2025. plans to send probes to observe Mars and Venus.
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