About Aditya L1
Aditya L1 is the first space based observatory class Indian solar mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft is planned to be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth.
A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipse. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities continuously. The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle detectors.
Using the special vantage point of L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1.
The suit of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial information to understand the problems of coronal heating, Coronal Mass Ejection, pre-flare and flare activities, and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, study of the propagation of particles, and fields in the interplanetary medium etc.
ISRO ventures into the study of solar activities and its effect on space weather. The scientific objectives of Aditya-L1 mission includes, study of coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, Coronal Mass Ejections (CME),dynamics of solar atmosphere and temperature anisotropy.
About PSLV-C57 :-
PSLV-C57 is the 59th flight of PSLV and 25th mission using PSLV-XL configuration.It is planned from Second Launch Pad (SLP), SDSC, SHAR. PSLV-C57 will launch Aditya-L1 spacecraft in a highly eccentric Earth bound orbit. The spacecraft will perform orbital maneuvers by using its LAM to reach Sun-Earth Lagrange point L1 (1.5 million kilometers from Earth, in a halo orbit).
The Sun :-
Our Sun is the nearest star and the largest object in the solar system. The estimated age of sun is about 4.5 billion years. It is a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium gases. The distance to the sun from the earth is about 150 million kilometres, and is the source of energy for our solar system.
Without the solar energy the life on earth, as we know, can not exist. The gravity of the sun holds all the objects of the solar system together. At the central region of the sun, known as ‘core’, the temperature can reach as high as 15 million degree Celsius.
At this temperature, a process called nuclear fusion takes place in the core which powers the sun. The visible surface of the sun known as photosphere is relatively cool and has temperature of about 5,500°C.
The spacecraft carries seven scientific payloads for systematic study of the Sun. All payloads are indigenously developed in collaboration with various ISRO Centres and Scientific Institutes.
1.VELC ( Visible Emission Line Coronagraph ) :-
VELC is the prime payload designed as a reflective coronagraph with a multi-slit spectrograph.
2.SUIT ( Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope ) :-
SUIT is a UV telescope to image the solar disk in the near ultra-violet
wavelength range.
3.SoLEXS ( Solar Low Energy X-ray spectrometer ) :-
SoLEXS is a soft X-ray spectrometer designed to measure the solar soft X-ray flux to study solar flares.
4.HEL1OS ( High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer ) :-
HEL1OS is a hard X-ray spectrometer designed to study solar flares in the high energy X-rays.
5.ASPEX ( Aditya solar wind particle Experiment ) :-
Solar Wind Ion Spectrometer is a low-energy spectrometer designed to measure the proton and alpha particles of the solar wind.
6.PAPA ( Plasma Analysis package for aditya ) :-
PAPA is designed to understand solar
winds and its composition and, do
mass analysis of solar wind ions.
7.MAG ( Magnetometer ) :-
MAG will measure the low
intensity interplanetary magnetic field in space.It has two sets of Magnetic Sensors: one at the tip of a 6 meter deployable boom,
and the other in the middle of the boom, 3 meters away from the
spacecraft.
