The Aditya L-1 solar mission is expected to launch next year by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota. (Image source: ISRO)The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has its sight set on the sun. After the successful launch of Chandrayaan-2 earlier this week, the Indian space agency now looks to launch its solar mission called the Aditya L-1 by the next year.
The Aditya L-1 solar program will be studying the Sun’s corona which are basically the outer layers. The mission will also try to understand and predict climate change on Earth. According to news agency PTI, the Aditya L-1 is likely to be launched during the first half of 2020.
The Aditya L-1 satellite will be inserted in a halo orbit about 1.5 million km from Earth. From there it will be observing the corona which spreads across thousands of kilometers. According to ISRO, the temperature of the corona is more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the temperature of the solar disk which is around 6,000K.
The Indian space agency has said, “how the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics,”. The project is approved and the satellite will be launched by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota.
Aditya-L1, with additional experiments, can provide observations of the Sun’s photosphere, chromosphere and corona. In addition, particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun, ISRO said on its website.
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Apart from Aditya-L1, ISRO has announced seven scientific missions in the next decade including the Gaganyan, its first manned mission to space.
