ISRO's Solar Mission Aditya L 1 To Be Launched On Saturday Morning

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday announced that it will launch its solar mission, Aditya L-1 on September 2 at 11:50 a.m.

The Aditya-L1, India's first space observatory for solar research, is getting ready for launch at the country's main spaceport in Sriharikota.

The spacecraft is designed to provide remote observations of the solar corona and study the solar atmosphere. The spacecraft will also study the solar winds, which can cause disturbance on Earth and are commonly seen as "auroras".

ISRO took to X, formerly Twitter to share the news. The space agency wrote, "The launch of Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is scheduled for September 2, 2023, at 11:50 Hrs. IST from Sriharikota."

The Aditya-L1 mission, aimed at studying the Sun from an orbit around the L1, would carry seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun, the corona, in different wavebands.

Aditya-L1 is a fully indigenous effort with the participation of national institutions, an ISRO official said.

The major science objectives of the Aditya-L1 mission are: Study of Solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics; Study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionised plasma, initiation of the coronal mass ejections, and flares; Observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment providing data for the study of particle dynamics from the Sun.

They also include Physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism; Diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: Temperature, velocity and density; Development, dynamics and origin of CMEs; Identify the sequence of processes that occur at multiple layers (chromosphere, base and extended corona) which eventually leads to solar eruptive events; Magnetic field topology and magnetic field measurements in the solar corona; Drivers for space weather (origin, composition and dynamics of solar wind.

The instruments of Aditya-L1 are tuned to observe the solar atmosphere, mainly the chromosphere and corona. In-situ instruments will observe the local environment at L1.