The Four-Month, 1.5 Million Kilometre Aditya L1 Solar Mission: Explained

The ISRO will launch Aditya L1—India’s first solar mission—on Friday from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

Aditya L1, the first solar mission ever from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), is scheduled to launch on Friday from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. Days after the momentous success of Chandrayaan-3, which landed on the Moon’s south pole last Wednesday, ISRO will launch the spacecraft at 11.50 am.

Aditya L1’s mission is to put the spacecraft in a “halo orbit” around the Sun-Earth system’s Lagrange point 1, or L1, which is located roughly 1.5 million kilometers away from the Earth. ISRO will use the project to investigate how solar activity affects space weather in real time. Understanding “coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particles and fields, etc.,” according to the space agency, is one of the unmanned mission’s other main goals.

According to ISRO, it will take roughly four months to travel the staggering 1.5 million kilometers to the planned mission site.

The four-month journey of Aditya L1

The spacecraft will first be positioned in a low earth orbit, according to an explanation from the ISRO on its website.

The spacecraft will then use onboard propulsion to accelerate toward the Lagrange point L1 as its orbit becomes more elliptical, according to the statement. Aditya L1 will leave the earth’s gravitational Sphere of Influence as it moves toward L1. After exiting it, the craft will enter its “cruise phase” and be injected into a massive halo orbit around L1. Aditya-L1 would take around four months to travel from launch to L1, according to the ISRO.

How do Lagrange points work?

Lagrange points are places in space where two celestial bodies’ gravitational pull creates pockets of gravitational equilibrium, such as the Sun and Earth. By doing so, the spacecraft can maintain its current position without using fuel.

In a system like the Earth-Sun system, there are five Lagrange points, numbered L1 to L5. The L1 and L2 points, which are the nearest to the planet, are suitable observational study locations.

L2 is home to the James Webb Space Telescope, which is NASA’s replacement for the renowned Hubble telescope.