India successfully launches its first space mission to study the Sun

india successfully launched its first space mission this Saturday for the sun studya launch that represents a new achievement for the space program of the asian countrywhich last week became the first nation to land on the south pole of the Moon.

The launch of the Aditya-L1 (Sun, in Sanskrit) probe with the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket took place at 11:50 am (6:20 am GMT) from the center of Sriharikota in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, as shown live during the countdown Space Research Organization of the India (ISRO).

“Congratulations, Aditya-L1 has been injected into an elliptical orbit (…) which is what the PSLV very precisely intended”, said the head of the ISRO, Sreedhara Panicker Somanath, from the control center after confirming the success of the takeoff.

“From now on Aditya-L1 will start its journey, after some ground maneuvers it will start its journey to point L1. A very long journey of almost 125 days”, he added.

The probe will orbit the Landwhich it will use to progressively gain speed, before heading towards its final destination: the first Lagrange point (L1), a place between the Sun and the Land separated by 1.5 million kilometers from our planet.

The mission will take about four months to reach that point, which is barely 1% of the distance that separates both celestial bodies, and which stands out for being gravitationally stable, since the attraction of the Sun and the Land it is in balance, facilitating the continued observation of the star without being affected by eclipses or occultations.

From there, Aditya-L1 will study the outermost layers of the Sun, the photosphere, the chromosphere and the corona, through seven payloads that will employ electromagnetic and particle detectors and magnetic fields, reported ISRO.

These tools have the objective of “obtaining information that helps to understand the problems of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, activities prior to solar flares and their characteristics, the dynamics of the space weatherthe study of the propagation of particles and fields in the interplanetary medium”, continued the space agency India .

The mass of Aditya-L1 is 1480.7 kilograms and is expected to remain in operation for about five years.

Although ISRO has not reported the budget of the mission, the local media estimate that it amounts to about 4,000 million rupees, equivalent to more than US $ 48 million.

With this mission, the India joins a select group of countries that have sent probes to study the Sun, including China, USA, Japanor the extinct Germany Occidental (in collaboration with the POT), as well as the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Prime Minister of the IndiaNarendra Modi, congratulated the ISRO scientists on the social network X (formerly Twitter) “for the successful launch of the first solar mission of the India” and recalled that this new trip joins the recent success achieved by the country with its Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon.

The launch of Aditya-L1 comes ten days after the historic moon landing of a probe Indiain the unexplored south pole of the Moon, within the framework of the Chandrayaan-3 mission of the ISRO, which made the Asian country the first nation to reach the southernmost part of the Earth’s satellite.

With information from EFE