Hello everyone
You guys must have heard a lot about the mission to go to the moon, but have you ever heard about the mission to go to the sun? Absolutely not but recently India have launched a spacecraft named Aditya L1, the mission of this spacecraft is to study about the sun. During this mission this spacecraft will be closer to the earth at the L1 point. The full form of L1 is Lagrange point 1, it will be a point where this spacecraft will rotate in the Halo orbit.
It will gonna take about 4 months from launch to reach the L1 point because this L1 point is 15,00,000 KM far from the earth. Once this Aditya L1 spacecraft will be launched, it will be kept there at L1 point for about 5 years to observe the sun. This is the reason its not only a spacecraft but also a space observatory too.
Now the question comes in our mind that what this spacecraft Aditya L1 will study about the sun? To understand this we need to know a little information about the sun. The diameter of the sun is about 109x larger than the diameter of the earth and when it comes on the weight, the sun is 3,33,000x heavier than the earth. If you want to visualize it, you can figure out that 1.3 million earths can fit into one sun.
I think you guys have heard that there are separate layers within the earth which are core, mantle and crust, similarly there are also separate layers within the sun that are core, radiative zone, convective zone, the surface of the sun which is called photosphere, then it comes another layer called chromosphere, then a thin layer comes which is called Transition region and then it comes outermost layer of the sun which is called Corona.
Aditya L1's mission is to study the three upper layers of the sun which are called Photosphere (6000 °C), Lower Chromosphere (4000 °C) Upper Chromosphere (10000 °C) and Corona (1000000 °C).
To observe and study about the sun there are 7 instruments installed in this spacecraft you can call them 7 payloads.
Number 1: Visible emission line coronagraph, its short form is VELC, it will study about the corona layer and it will observe about the coronal mass ejections.
Number 2: Solar ultra-violet imaging telescope, its short form is SUIT, it will take the image of Photosphere and Chromosphere in the ultra-violet spectrum.
Number 3: Solar low energy X-Ray spectrometer, its short form is SOLEXS, it will study about the X-Rays that comes out from the sun especially the X-Rays that comes out from the solarflares.
Number 4: High energy L1 orbiting X-Ray spectrometer, its short form is HELIOS, it will also study about the X-Rays that comes out from the sun.
Number 5: Aditya solar wind particle experiment, its short form is ASPEX, it will study about the solar wind.
Number 6: Plasma analyser package for aditya, its short form is PAPA, it will also study about the solar wind.
Number 7: Magnetometer, its short form is MAG, it will measure the magnetic fields that comes at the L1 point.
From the above 7 payloads, 4 payloads will directly study about the sun and the remaining 3 payloads will take measurements at the L1 point.
I hope this post was informative for you all, my mission is to spread knowledge among all the #Hivers and I hope I will be successful in my mission because I'm working hard on my research's and surely it will pays off. I would be glad to see your point of views about this spacecraft in the comment section below.
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