Sunny days ahead for India in space as its solar mission Aditya L1 takes off

International Desk

Published: September 2, 2023, 01:59 PM

Sunny days ahead for India in space as its solar mission Aditya L1 takes off

The space agency said the spacecraft would be launched by PSLV-C57 rocket. (Image Source: ISRO/Twitter)

Following up on the success of India‍‍`s moon landing with the Chandrayaan-3, ISRO on Saturday launched Aditya-L1 mission to study the sun.

India‍‍`s first solar probe aims to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on earth commonly seen as auroras.

The solar mission follows India beating Russia late last month to become the first country to land on the south pole of the moon. While Russia had a more powerful rocket, India‍‍`s Chandrayaan-3 out-endured the Luna-25 to execute a textbook landing.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to travel about 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) over four months to a kind of parking lot in space where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.

India is set to launch its first observation mission to the Sun, just days after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the Moon‍‍`s south pole.

Once Aditya-L1 reaches this "parking spot", it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.

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