India’s Leap into Space: Aditya-L1 Mission Unveiling New Horizons
"By becoming the third space agency ever to reach L1, ISRO will cement its position as one of the leaders in the global space race,” says Professor Somak Raychaudhury, Vice Chancellor, Ashoka University
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“Coming closely on the heels of the success of Chandrayaan-3, the launch of the Aditya-L1 mission is a display of serious intent by ISRO to demonstrate India’s prowess in space flight, engineering and research. For the first time, India will have an indigenously built space-based solar observatory, launched to reach a parking space that is 1.5 million kilometres away from our planet. This is one of the most complex missions undertaken by the Indian establishment, requiring highly intricate manoeuvres to correctly place the spacecraft into a halo orbit at the Lagrangian Point 1 (L1) between the Earth and Sun, taking advantage of the competing gravitational pulls of the two bodies. The mission will simultaneously study the relation between events on the Sun’s surface and the corresponding changes in the Sun’s corona, seeking to understand why the corona is more than a million degrees hot. It will also study the ejection of highly energetic charged particles from the Sun and their effect on planets, in real-time, in order to build an early-warning system for solar storms that can cause serious damage to Earth- bound satellites, our communication systems and electrical grids. It will also help us understand how the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun impacts our climate. By becoming the third ever space agency to reach L1, ISRO will cement its position as one of the leaders in the global space race.”
Somak Raychaudhury,
Vice Chancellor, Ashoka University
