New Delhi: India launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun on Saturday, less than two weeks after making history with a successful moon landing.<\/p>\n
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota island, off the Bay of Bengal, at 11:50 a.m. local time.<\/p>\n
The craft will take over four months to reach its destination, to orbit around 1.5 million km from Earth and observe the photosphere and chromosphere and study solar wind particles and magnetic fields.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter some earth maneuvers the Aditya-L1will start its journey to the L1 point \u2014 a very long journey of almost 125 days, so let us wish all the very best to Aditya spacecraft for its long journey and being put around halo orbit of L1,\u201d Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, head of the Indian Space Research Organization, said in a televised address.<\/p>\n
Indian authorities have not disclosed the cost of the mission, but local media estimated it to be around $46 million.<\/p>\n
Aditya, which means \u201cthe sun,\u201d is heading for Lagrange point 1, an area that lies between the sun and Earth where the gravitational pulls of both cancel each other out, which will allow the spacecraft to remain in orbit with little use of fuel.<\/p>\n
\u201cLagrange-1 is a suitable location to look at the sun,\u201d Lt. Gen. A.K. Bhatt (Retd.), director general of the Indian Space Association told Arab News. \u201cWe have multiwavelength observation which will monitor all these dynamic events that happen in the solar atmosphere, which directly impact the interplanetary space environment and, in turn, influence the Earth\u2019s environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
India\u2019s solar mission adds to its status as an emerging space superpower, building on ISRO\u2019s historic success on Aug. 23, when it landed the moon rover Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar surface, making India the first country to land near the lunar south pole and the fourth to land on the moon \u2014 after the US, Russia, and China.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking on two major projects and executing them within (a month of each other) is quite momentous,\u201d said Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in Nainital, which specializes in astronomy and solar physics. \u201cIt also demonstrates to the global players that India is not behind; we have the manpower and the capacity to execute such major projects.\u201d <\/p>\n
To date, the US is the only other country to have explored the sun. It launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a huge milestone and it\u2019s also a technological demonstration from the Indian Space Research Organization, because, so far, only NASA has been able to successfully send satellites to Lagrange-1,\u201d Banerjee told Arab News. \u201cWe still have to reach there, but it\u2019s a big milestone that we have started our journey.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi: India launched its first spacecraft dedicated to studying the sun on Saturday, less than two weeks after making history with a successful moon landing. The Aditya-L1 spacecraft was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota island, off the Bay of Bengal, at 11:50 a.m. local time. The craft will take over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-353335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n