- The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch the Aditya-L1 mission by June or July this year. Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space mission to observe the Sun and the solar corona.
- ISRO chairman S. Somanath, speaking at the handover ceremony of the Visible Line Emission Coronagraph (VELC) payload on Thursday, said that the Aditya-L1 mission will be launched by June or July as the launch window for the mission would close by August.
- The Aditya-L1 mission will be launched to the L1 orbit (which is the first Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system). L1 orbit allows Aditya-L1 to look at the Sun continuously.
- Aditya-L1 has seven payloads, of which the primary payload is the VELC, designed and fabricated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru. The other six payloads are being developed by the ISRO and other scientific institutions.
- “No other solar coronagraph in space has the ability to image the solar corona as close to the solar disk as VELC can,” said an official.
SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB