India's PSLV-C57 rocket carrying the Aditya-L1 satellite launches from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota.
A week after a successful landing by its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the lunar south pole, India has passed another milestone after deploying its first solar observation satellite, Aditya-L1, into space.
Named after the Sanskrit word for Sun, Aditya-L1 blasted off from Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota on Sept. 2 at 11:50 a.m. local time on board the PSLV-C57 rocket.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) later confirmed that the satellite reached its intended orbit, with its solar panels have deployed and the craft generating its own power.
Aditya-L1 will execute an Earth-centered orbit transfer for 16 days before cruising to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), where gravitational forces of the two bodies balance out. The journey to L1 is expected to take 110 days.
The satellite has seven domestically developed payloads: a visible emission line coronagraph, a solar ultraviolet imaging telescope, a solar low-energy X-ray spectrometer, a high-energy L1 orbiting X-ray spectrometer, a solar wind particle experiment, a plasma analyzer package, and a magnetometer. They are all to observe the Sun’s photosphere, chromosphere and corona.
Separately, ISRO said its Pragyan lunar rover has been placed into “sleep mode” as it awaits the next lunar sunrise on Sept. 22. Pragyan has traveled more than 328 ft. (100 m) on the Moon and conducted measurements of soil samples, confirming the presence of sulfur and sparse distribution of plasma on the Moon’s surface.
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