Aditya-L1 mission

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TOPICS COVERED: Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights.

Context:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) released images of the Aditya-L1 mission

About the Aditya-L1 mission

• The Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
• It’s equipped with seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.
• Aditya L1 will perform continuous observations looking directly at the Sun.

Significance of studying the Sun

• The solar weather and environment affect the weather of the entire solar system.
• Variations in this weather can change the orbits of satellites or shorten their lives, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power blackouts and other disturbances on Earth.
• Knowledge of solar events is key to understanding space weather.
• To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
• Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
• L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
• Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
• These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position.
• The L1 point is home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO), an international collaboration project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
• The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB