ADITYA L1 (Syllabus GS Paper 3 – Sci and Tech)

Context: ISRO's Aditya-L1 spacecraft's two onboard remote sensing instruments have captured the recent solar fury.

Aditya L1

• About: It is the country’s first dedicated solar mission. It is a fully indigenous effort with the participation of national institutions. 
• China, Japan, the US and European countries have similar missions that investigate solar flares, coronal mass ejections and the sun’s magnetic fields.
• It is also ISRO’s second astronomy observatory-class mission after AstroSat (2015). 
• Launched by: PSLV-XL launch vehicle.
• Aim: The mission aims to study the Sun from a halo orbit around first Sun-earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from Earth. 

oA satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. 

• Payloads: 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.  

Lagrangian Points

• About: It is known as Lagrange points or libration points.
• Located: about 1.5 million kms inside Earth's orbit, between the Sun and the Earth.
• These are particular points in space where the gravitational forces between two
• massive objects, like a planet and its moon or a planet and the Sun, create areas of heightened gravitational stability.