India's First Solar Mission Likely To Be Launched By June/July: ISRO

The Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics is likely to launch India's first solar mission, named as Aditya-L1, to observe the sun from a vantage point 1.5 million km from the earth by June or July this year. 

The Institute has handed over the primary payload to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for integration with the other payloads on board the satellite. The mission was delayed several times due to pandemic. 

ISRO chairperson S Somanath presented a 3D model of the payload and mentioned that the satellite will be carried by country's trusted rocket, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle on Thursday.

Somanath said that the it took 15 years to develop due to the complexity of the chronograph and what it was attempting to do and he added that there was a need for a 50-year road map of scientific explorations and missions. 

Scientists should come up with novel ideas that are not attempted by other countries, those projects which seems to be impossible, he said. 

The payload, Visible Emission Line Coronograph (VELC) is the vital payload among other seven designed to study the several aspects of the sun such as solar wind acceleration, atmosphere and origin of coronal mass ejection. 

The satellite will travel to the L1 (Lagrange) point between the sun and the earth to get the unobstructed and continuous view of the sun. 

There are five Lagrange points between any two celestial objects and are referred to as parking spots in space. The gravitational force of the celestial bodies is equal to the force required to keep it in orbit. Therefore, a satellite can remain in Lagrange points between any two celestial objects without consuming fuel.