India has successfully launched its first solar observatory mission, Aditya-L1, just 10 days after the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft’s lunar south pole landing.
Aditya-L1, weighing over 3,264 pounds, was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, South India, using a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-XL) at 11:50 AM local time on Saturday. The spacecraft will travel 932,000 miles and take 125 days to reach its destination: a halo orbit around one of the five Lagrangian points between the sun and Earth. These points allow continuous tracking of solar activities without occultation or eclipse.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) equipped Aditya-L1 with seven payloads, including instruments for remote sensing and on-site experiments. Its mission, PSLV-C57, aims to observe real-time solar activities and their effects on space weather.
The spacecraft will study the sun’s photosphere, chromosphere, and corona, while on-site experiment instruments will observe the local environment at Lagrangian point L1.
Aditya-L1, funded at approximately $46 million in 2019, was initially designed to study the solar corona but was later expanded to include research on the solar and space environments.
While the US, Europe, and China have previously conducted solar observatory missions in space, this is India’s first foray into this domain, as it previously focused on sun observation through ground-based telescopes.
ISRO garnered worldwide attention for Chandrayaan-3’s successful moon landing. The lunar mission aims to conduct experiments to facilitate future human landings.
ISRO is concurrently working on the Gaganyaan human space flight mission for 2025 and an unmanned mission to Venus. In June, India became a signatory of NASA’s Artemis Accords for joint space experiments and astronaut training, and ISRO and NASA are collaborating on a low-Earth observatory mission slated for a 2024 launch.
India’s recent space policy aims to enhance private sector involvement in space missions, and the nation already boasts over 150 space tech startups. Investments in Indian space tech startups grew by 17% to $112 million in 2022, with a 60% increase in capital infusion, reaching $62 million in 2023, as per Tracxn data. The ease of foreign direct investments is expected to further boost investment in Indian startups.
