India lifted off on Saturday the last mission of its ambitious space program for a trip to the center of the solar system, a week after successfully landing an unmanned vehicle near the south pole of the Moon.
The Aditya-L1 probe, “Sun” in Hindi, was launched at 11:50 a.m. (0620 GMT), and a live television broadcast showed hundreds of spectators cheering amid the deafening noise of the rocket’s ascent.
“Congratulations to our scientists and engineers,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on X (ex-Twitter).
“Our tireless scientific efforts will continue to develop a better understanding of the Universe,” he said.
The mission carries scientific instruments to observe the outer layers of the Sun during a four-month journey.
The United States and the European Space Agency (ESA) have already placed spacecraft in orbit to study the Sun, starting with NASA’s Pioneer program in the 1960s, but this will be a first for the Sun. ‘India.
Both Japan and China have launched their own solar observation missions in Earth orbit.
If successful, however, ISRO’s latest mission will be the first to be orbited around the Sun by an Asian nation.
“This is an ambitious mission for India,” astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury told broadcaster NDTV on Friday.
Mr Raychaudhury said the probe would study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon that results in huge discharges of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun’s atmosphere.
They are so powerful that they can reach Earth and potentially disrupt the functioning of satellites.
Aditya will help predict these phenomena “and alert everyone so that the satellites can cut their power,” added the astrophysicist.
According to him, “it will also help us to understand how these things happen and in the future we may not need a warning system.”
Aditya will travel 1.5 million kilometers to reach its destination, which is still only one percent of the immense distance between Earth and the sun.
At that time, the gravitational forces of the two celestial bodies cancel each other out, allowing the mission to remain in a stable orbit around our nearest star.
The study satellite is carried by the ISRO-designed 320-tonne PSLV XL rocket, which is a mainstay of India’s space program and has already carried out launches to the Moon and Mars.
The mission also aims to shed light on the dynamics of several other solar phenomena by imaging and measuring particles in the upper atmosphere of the Sun.
India has consistently matched the achievements of established space powers for a fraction of their cost.
India’s aerospace program has a relatively modest budget, but one that has been significantly increased since its first attempt to orbit the moon in 2008.
According to industry experts, India manages to keep costs low by replicating and adapting existing space technology for its own purposes, thanks in particular to the large number of highly qualified engineers who are paid much less than their foreign counterparts.
Last month’s successful moon landing – a feat previously achieved only by Russia, the United States and China – cost less than $75 million.
It was widely celebrated by the public, with prayer rituals to wish the success of the mission and schoolchildren following the final descent through live broadcasts in classrooms.
In 2014, India was the first Asian nation to place a spacecraft in orbit around Mars. It plans to launch a three-day manned mission around Earth by next year.
A joint mission with Japan should send a probe to the Moon by 2025 and a mission to Venus within two years.
02/09/2023 10:39:44 Sriharikota (Inde) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
