Chennai, India

As India celebrates the success of the Chandrayaan-3 Lunar landing, the Indian space agency is gearing up for the launch of its maiden mission to study the Sun, in less than two weeks. Known as Aditya-L1, this is a mission where an Indian spacecraft would travel the furthest away from the earth and it would be placed 1.5 million kilometres away, at a vantage point known as Langrangian point 1. "The preparation for Aditya-L1 is going really well. At the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, final checks are being carried out on the spacecraft and the PSLV rocket(mission number C57) for this mission is being assembled," A.Rajarajan, the Director of the spaceport told WION. 

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Speaking to WION after the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3, he said that the Aditya-L1 mission is to be launched in the first week of September. So far, the Indian space agency has launched six missions in the year 2023. While four of these missions were for India's own national and scientific purposes, two of them have been missions for foreign customers. ISRO has had a great year with successes in all launch missions. 

Also read | ISRO releases moon's footage from minutes before Chandrayaan-3's landing. WATCH

Notably, the launch activity of ISRO had drastically slowed down in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This had caused delays to several missions and led to a backlog in the activity. Queried about how the spaceport is handling various missions simultaneously, Rajarajan told WION that the team had learnt several lessons during the pandemic and accordingly made their work processes more optimised and efficient. He indicated how ISRO had been able to fulfil both national and commercial missions, while also making arrangements for Indian space sector startups to use their facilities for development and testing activities. 

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Queried about how the launch calendar looked for the next four months, he said that there could be four launches including Aditya-L1, experimental flights as part of Gaganyaan development programme, followed by PSLV and GSLV launches. 

In 2022, the Indian Space agency has designated senior Solar Scientist Dr. Sankarasubramanian as the Principal Scientist of the 'Aditya-L1' Mission. He heads the Space Astronomy Group (SAG) of ISRO's UR Rao Satellite Centre, Bengaluru and has contributed to ISRO missions such as Chandrayaan 1 & 2, AstroSat, in several capacities. 

Also watch | Chandrayaan-3: Pragyan rover will conduct scientific experiments on lunar surface

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Aditya-L1 is the first observatory-class space-based solar mission from India. The spacecraft is to be placed in a halo orbit around the first Lagrange point, L1, of the Sun-Earth system. A satellite around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without occultation/eclipses. This position provides a greater advantage of observing solar activities continuously. 

Aditya-L1 carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle detectors. According to ISRO, Four payloads on Aditya-L1 directly view the Sun from the unique vantage point of L1, and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1.

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