2023-09-02 07:42:00
India plans to take another major step on Saturday with the launch of a probe to study the Sun, a week following successfully landing an unmanned vehicle near the Moon’s south pole.
Aditya-L1, “Sun” in Hindi, will carry scientific instruments to observe the outer layers of the Sun. It will take off at 11:50 a.m. (0620 GMT) for a four-month journey to its destination 1.5 million kilometers away.
NASA and the European Space Agency have already placed spacecraft in orbit to study the Sun, but this will be a first for India. “This is an ambitious mission for India,” astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury told broadcaster NDTV on Friday. Mr Raychaudhury said the probe would study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon that results in huge discharges of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun’s atmosphere. They are so powerful that they can reach Earth and potentially disrupt the functioning of satellites.
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Aditya will help predict these phenomena “and alert everyone so that the satellites can cut their power,” added the astrophysicist. The study satellite is carried by the 320-ton PSLV XL rocket, designed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). She is one of the pillars of the Indian space program and has already carried out launches to the Moon and Mars.
India’s aerospace program has a relatively modest budget, but one that has been significantly increased since its first attempt to orbit the moon in 2008.
According to industry experts, India manages to keep costs low by replicating and adapting existing space technology for its own purposes, thanks in particular to the large number of highly qualified engineers who are paid much less than their foreign counterparts.
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The successful moon landing last month – a feat previously achieved only by Russia, the United States and China – cost less than $75 million (70 million euros). In 2014, India was the first Asian nation to place a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. It plans to launch a three-day manned mission around Earth by next year.
A joint mission with Japan is to send a probe to the Moon by 2025 and a mission to Venus within two years.
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