2023-08-30 14:36:17
While piloting a rover on the Moon, India is preparing to launch the Aditya-L1 probe, intended to observe and study our Sun. Take-off is scheduled for September 2. We take stock of the objectives of the mission.
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Space India today has many cards in its cards in its deck. After achieving the feat of landing on the Moon with Chandrayaan 3 on August 23, space India is preparing to study the SunSun from the space with the Aditya-L1 probe, whose takeoff is scheduled for September 2, at 8:20 a.m. Paris time (11:50 a.m. local time), aboard a PSLV-XL rocket. The mission is to last five years.
One more mission to demystify our Star
The scientific objectives of Aditya-L1 can be summed up in the study of its upper “atmosphereatmosphere” (our Sun does not really have an atmosphere but several strata that are increasingly less filled with particles and plasma), above its surface. If the ESAESA seems to have found some answers on the origin of the solar windsolar wind with the data of Solar Orbiter, the mechanisms of heating of the solar corona, or initialization of the coronal mass ejections (CME), can cause stormstorms major geomagnetic waves on Earth.
Sun: when and how will our star die?
Aditya therefore seeks more to study the chromospherechromosphere and the solar corona rather than the Sun itself. The key instrument for this is a coronagraphcoronograph, which artificially eclipses our StarStar to observe EMC in various spectral bands. This is the main VELC instrument aboard Aditya.
The probe has six other instruments:
Suit, telescopetelescope to observe the photospherephotosphere and chromosphere of the Sun in near UVUV;Aspex, to measure variations in the solar wind and the distribution of its components;Papa, to analyze the composition of the solar wind and its energyenergy;SoLEXS, X-ray ray spectrometer X to study the heating of the corona during an eruption; HEL1OS, another X-ray spectrometer to study the energy of certain events in the corona that can accelerate solar particles during a storm; a magnetometer magnetometer to measure the magnetic field interplanetary magnetic field.
Aditya weighs 1,500 kilos on takeoff, including 244 kilos of scientific instrumentation. When the project was launched in 2008, Isro (Indian space agency) initially thought of sending a 400-kilogram satellite into heliosynchronousheliosynchronous low orbit, carrying a coronagraph as the only payload. But a first study showed that this required a larger satellite platform.
India joins the solar space telescope club
Aditya means “Sun” in Sanskrit. As its name complement indicates, the probe will be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point L1 of the Earth-Sun system, 1.5 million kilometers from our planet. It is an ideal point of view to observe our Star without wanting to have the ambition to visit it more closely like the Solar Orbiter probes of ESA or Parker Solar Probe of NASA. Point L1 is between the Earth and the Sun, so Aditya will be able to study our Star there without it being occulted.
India deploys its first solar telescope in space. Aditya joins the other probes: ESA’s SoHOSoHO (with NASA’s participation), NASA’s SDOSDO, or even Chase and ASO-S from the Chinese space agency. Aditya-L1 will be especially interesting by its main instrument VELC. Rare are the space probes to carry a coronagraph to study this opaque world located just above the solar surface, and where it can nevertheless reach up to 5 million degrees!
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