India set for Sun expedition

India's first satellite to study the Sun is getting ready for its launch soon, the national space research agency was quoted as saying today.

The Aditya L1 satellite, realized at U R Rao Satellite Centre in Bentaluru, has arrived at the ISRO's spaceport in Sriharikota, about 100km from Chennai, the space agency said in an update on the mission.

"September first week," an ISRO official told PTI when asked about the date of the launch.

The spacecraft is expected to be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth.

A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses, ISRO noted. "This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real-time," it said.

The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors.

Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads will directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads would carry out studies of particles and fields at the L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium.

"The Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide the most crucial information to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc.," ISRO said.

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