Successful liftoff: Spectators watch as the rocket carrying Aditya-L1 is launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. — AFP
THE latest mission in India’s ambitious space programme blasted off on Friday, Sept 1, on a voyage towards the centre of the solar system, a week after the country’s successful unmanned Moon landing.
Aditya-L1 launched shortly before midday, with a live broadcast showing hundreds of spectators cheering wildly against the deafening noise of the rocket’s ascent.
“Launch successful, all normal,” an Indian Space Research Organisation official announced from mission control as the vessel made its way to the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The mission is carrying scientific instruments to observe the Sun’s outermost layers in a four-month journey.
The United States and the European Space Agency (ESA) have sent numerous probes to the centre of the solar system, beginning with Nasa’s Pioneer programme in the 1960s.
Japan and China have both launched their own solar observatory missions into Earth’s orbit.
But if successful, the latest mission from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be the first by any Asian nation to be placed in orbit around the Sun.
“It’s a challenging mission for India,” astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury told broadcaster NDTV.
Raychaudhury said the mission probe would study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon that sees huge discharges of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun’s atmosphere.
These bursts are so powerful they can reach the Earth and potentially disrupt the operation of satellites.
Aditya will help predict the phenomenon “and alert everybody so that satellites can shut down their power”, he said.
“It will also help us understand how these things happen, and in the future, we might not need a warning system out there.”
Aditya, the name of the Hindu Sun deity, will travel 1.5 million kilometres to reach its destination – still only 1% of the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.
At that point, the gravitational forces of both celestial bodies cancel each other out, allowing the mission to remain in a stable halo orbit around the sun. — AFP
