India has launched their first rocket to study the sun, following a successful moon landing and marking a new chapter on the nation’s quest to be one of the world’s top space explorers.
Key points:
- The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to travel about 1.5m km over four months
- Data from the mission could help better understand the Sun’s impact on Earth’s climate patterns
- A live broadcast on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s website was watched by nearly 500,000 viewers
On Saturday, the Aditya-L1 rocket, named after the Hindi word for the sun, left in a trail of smoke and fire.
A live broadcast on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) website was watched by nearly 500,000 viewers, while thousands gathered at a viewing gallery near the launch site.
The probe will aim to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on Earth commonly seen as auroras.
The Aditya-L1 launch follows India beating Russia last month to become the first country to land on the south pole of the Moon.
While Russia had a more powerful rocket, India’s Chandrayaan-3 out-endured the Luna-25 to execute a textbook landing.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to travel about 1.5 million kilometres over four months to the equivalent of a parking lot in space, where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.
The mission has the capacity to make a “big bang in terms of science,” said Somak Raychaudhury, who was involved in the development of some components of the observatory.
“There have been episodes when major communications have gone down because a satellite has been hit by a big corona emission. Satellites in low earth orbit are the main focus of global private players, which makes the Aditya L1 mission a very important project,” he said.
Scientists hope to learn more about the effect of solar radiation on the thousands of satellites in orbit, a number growing with the success of ventures like the Starlink communications network of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“The low earth orbit has been heavily polluted due to private participation, so understanding how to safeguard satellites there will have special importance in today’s space environment,” said Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology’s head of earth and space sciences Rama Rao Nidamanuri.
Data from the mission could help better understand the sun’s impact on earth’s climate patterns and the origins of solar wind, the stream of particles that flow from the sun through the solar system, ISRO scientists said.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushed for India to privatise space launches and India is looking to open the sector to foreign investment as it targets a five-fold increase in its share of the global launch market within the next decade.
As space turns into a global business, the country is also banking on the success of ISRO to showcase its progess in the sector.
Reuters