The rocket carrying Aditya L1 is scheduled to lift-off today
India's first solar mission Aditya L1 on board the PSLV will lift off from Sriharikota today for its 125-day voyage towards the Sun. Aditya L1 is designed for providing remote observations of the solar corona and in situ observations of solar wind.
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The liquid apogee motor (LAM) developed by the Liquid Propulsion System Centre (LPSC) will be instrumental in putting the Aditya spacecraft into the Lagrangian Point 1 (L1) orbit, located about 1.5 million km from Earth.
The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), the primary payload of Aditya L1, will send 1,440 images per day to the ground station for analysis on reaching the intended orbit.
VELC carries seven payloads to study the Sun, four of which will observe the light from the Sun and the remaining three will measure in situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.
"From the continuum channel, which is the imaging channel, an image will come -- one image per minute. So approximately 1,440 images for 24 hours, we will be receiving at the ground station," Aditya L1 Project Scientist and Operation Manager for VELC Dr Muthu Priyal told news agency PTI.
According to the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), the 190 kg VELC payload will send images for five years, which is the nominal life of the satellite, but it could last long depending on the fuel consumption.
IIA scientists expect the first images to be available by February-end. "The satellite is expected to be put into orbit in the middle of January and then we will do the test if all the systems are working properly and by the end of February we expect to get the regular data," professor Jagdev Singh said.
"It will take time and we have to test instrument by instrument. First we will test the smaller instruments, and the VELC's shutter will be opened last, by mid of February," he added.
Also, the LPSC has been a proven centre of support for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in all its space missions since its inception in 1987. The liquid and cryogenic propulsion systems have been the backbone of India's space ambitions, playing a crucial role in both PSLV and GSLV rockets.
The main science drivers of Aditya-L1 are to understand the origin, dynamics, and propagation of coronal mass ejections and to help solve the coronal heating problem.
IIA's solar astronomy community is geared to calibrate and use data from VELC as well as other payloads on Aditya-L1 in the coming months to address fundamental questions about solar astrophysics as well as its impact on our daily lives.
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