India’s Solar Mission: Ready for Launch! All the Details on Aditya L1 Spacecraft’s Final Phase
India’s first solar research mission, the Aditya L1 spacecraft, is nearing its final phase. ISRO chief S Somanath said on Saturday that the Aditya spacecraft is expected to complete maneuvers and reach L1 by January 7, 2024.
“Aditya is doing well and is almost ready for its final phase,” Somanath told PTI.
Recently, the Indian Space Agency reported that Aditya-L1’s High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) detected a sudden burst of energy from a solar flare.
This flare occurred on October 29, just under two months after the launch of Aditya-L1. The solar probe spacecraft was launched on September 2 at 11:50 a.m. from the Sriharikota spaceport.
It was the first Indian solar observation mission launched by the Bengaluru-based space agency.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft carries a total of seven different payloads to study the Sun, four of which monitor the Sun’s light and the remaining three measure in situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.
Aditya-L1 will be placed in a halo orbit around Lagrangian point 1 (L1), which is 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the Sun. It revolves around the Sun at the same relative position and thus can see the Sun continuously.
In related news, ISRO has invited young students to participate in a robotics challenge. The competition is known as ISRO Robotics Challenge-URSC 2024 (IRoC-U 2024) and its tagline reads: “Building a space robot”.
According to reports, the space agency has given young students an opportunity to showcase their skills in space robotics, asking them to design and implement a “wheeled/legged rover” that involves complete hardware and software development.
It has been stated that the main objective of organizing the competition is to provide a standardized platform that helps to explore the field of space and robotics among students. Its goal is also to understand the student community’s ideas and knowledge about space and robotics.
(with PTI earnings)
