Aditya-L1: India's first mission to study the sun likely to launch in June; primary payload handed to ISRO
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) said it had successfully finished assembling, testing and calibrating VELC, the largest and one of the most technically challenging of the seven payloads/telescopes that will fly on Aditya-L1.
FollowThe Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) handed over to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) the Visible Line Emission Coronagraph (VELC), the primary payload onboard Aditya-L1, India's first dedicated scientific mission to study the sun, to be launched in June or July, on Thursday, January 26, 2023.
The ceremony was held at the Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST) campus in the presence of ISRO Chairman S Somanath.
The IIA said that it had successfully finished assembling, testing and calibrating VELC, the largest and one of the most technically challenging of the seven payloads/telescopes that will fly on Aditya-L1.
Further, ISRO will conduct the test of VELC and its eventual integration with the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, read the release. The launch of Aditya-L1 is expected in June or July, said ISRO chairman Somanath.
"Understanding the Sun's effect on Earth and its surroundings is becoming increasingly important, and Aditya-L1 aims to shed light on this subject. VELC took 15 years from concept to completion, which was necessary for such a complex system. The VELC was the most successful collaboration between IIA and ISRO," said Somanath.
Aditya L1 is India's first space-based mission to study the Sun from a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth system's Lagrangian point 1 (L1).
According to ISRO officials, this mission, with seven payloads on board to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the Sun's outermost layers (the corona), will provide a greater advantage in observing solar activities and their effect on space weather.
Director of the IIA, Prof Annapurni Subramaniam, said, "VELC is a team effort and a significant milestone for the institute. The effort has involved close collaboration between the IIA, ISRO, and many Indian industries. We anticipate exciting scientific results from this payload once it is operational." The solar space mission was initially planned as Aditya-1, with a 400 kg class satellite carrying one payload (VELC) and a launch in an 800 km low earth orbit.
Because the satellite in a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth system's L1 has the major benefit of continuously viewing the Sun without occultation or eclipses, later, the mission was renamed to Aditya-L1 and it would now be inserted in a halo orbit 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth towards the Sun.
The other six payloads are Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya, Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment, Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer, High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer, and Magnetometer. The satellite's scientific studies will "improve our current understanding of the Solar Corona while also providing vital data for space weather studies," said ISRO officials.
The VELC payload's Principal Investigator, Prof Raghavendra Prasad, further elaborates that no other solar coronagraph in space can image the solar corona as close to the solar disc as VELC can.
He explained, "It can image it as close to the solar radius as 1.05 times. It can also simultaneously perform imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry and take observations at a very high resolution and many times per second." Adding that this capability will revolutionise solar astronomy worldwide, and the data will be used to answer many outstanding questions in the field.
Former ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said that VELC is a complex piece of engineering and that it took 15 years to develop such a complex system. "This bodes well for future space missions, and I eagerly await more novel space science missions."
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