Aditya-L1: Ready to fly with 7 payloads, India’s first Sun mission

Bengaluru/Source. The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), the primary instrument of Aditya-L1, India’s first mission to study the Sun, will send 1,440 images daily to the ground station for analysis once it reaches the desired orbit. The VELC instrument is the ‘largest and most technically challenging’ payload of ‘Aditya-L1’, which was integrated in collaboration with ISRO at the CREST (Centre for Science Technology Research and Education) campus of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics at Hoskote near Bengaluru . Its testing and serialization work was also done in this premises.

‘Aditya-L1’ will be launched on September 2 at 11:50 am through PSLV-C57 rocket. It will carry seven payloads to study the Sun, four of which will observe sunlight and the remaining three instruments will measure in-situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic field. It will be placed in a halo orbit around the ‘Lagrangian’ point-1 (L1), which is 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the Sun. It will revolve around the Sun in the same relative position and hence can see the Sun continuously.

Dr Muthu Priyal, Project Scientist of Aditya L1 and Operations Manager of VELC, said, “The picture channel will receive one picture per minute, that is, about 1,440 pictures will be received by us at the ground station in 24 hours. Will be installed in the lower class. Later, its orbit will be gradually upgraded, and eventually it will start traveling towards the L-1 point near the Sun after coming out of the Earth’s gravitational field.

The journey from launch to L1 will take Aditya-L1 about four months and the distance from Earth will be about 1.5 million km. The distance between Earth and Moon is about 3.84 lakh km. ISRO said, “A satellite placed in coronal orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of observing the Sun continuously without any eclipse. This will make it possible to study solar activity and its effect on space weather in real time.