Subj : India just landed on the moon. Now its headed for the sun. To : All From : PopularScience-Space Date : Sat Sep 23 2023 00:38:15 India just landed on the moon. Now its headed for the sun. Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2023 18:00:00 +0000 Description: The rocket that will carry ISRO's spacecraft Aditya-L1 beyond Earth. ISRO India's Aditya-L1 spacecraft should wind up some 932,000 miles away to monitor our star. The post India just landed on the moon. Now its headed for the sun. appeared first on Popular Science . FULL STORY ====================================================================== The rocket that will carry ISRO's spacecraft Aditya-L1 beyond Earth. ISRO Update (September 5, 2023): India successfully launched its Aditya-L1 solar observatory on September 2 at 2:20 am EST. It is expected to arrive at its first destination between the Earth and the sun in January 2024. On August 23, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) pulled off the Chandrayaan-3 mission , depositingthe Vikram lander and Pragyan rover near the lunar South Pole. India is now the fourth nation to land on the moonfollowing Russia, the US and China and the first to land near the lunar South Pole , where the rover has already detected sulfur and oxygen in the moons soil. Fresh off of this success, ISRO already has another mission underway, and its next target is something much biggerthe sun. The ISROs Aditya-L1 spacecraft , armed with an array of sensors for studying solar physics, is scheduled to launch around 2 a.m. Eastern on September 2, atop a PSLV-C57 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, in southeast India. Aditya-L1 will begin a four-month journey to a special point in space. About 932,000 miles away is the sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian, an area where the gravity of Earth and the sun cancel out. By entering into an orbit around L1, the spacecraft can maintain a constant position relative to Earth as it orbits around the sun. It shares this maneuver with the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO , which has been in the sun-observation business since 1996. If it reaches the L1 orbit, Aditya-L1 will join SOHO, NASAs Parker Solar Probe , ESAs Solar orbiter, and a handful of other spacecraft dedicated to studying the closest star to Earth. This mission has instrumentation that captures a little bit of everything that all of these missions have already done, but that doesnt mean were going to replicate science, says Maria Weber , a solar astrophysicist at Delta State University in Mississippi, who also runs the states only planetarium at that campus. Were getting more information and more data now at another time, a new time in the solar cycle , that previous missions havent been able to capture for us. The sun undergoes 11-year patterns of waxing and waning magnetic activity, and the current solar cycle is expected to peak in 2025, corresponding with more sunspots and solar eruptions. Aditya-L1 being prepped for its mission in a cleanroom. ISRO Aditya-L1 will carry seven scientific payloads, including four remote sensing instruments: a coronagraph, which creates an artificial eclipse for better study of the suns corona, an ultraviolet telescope, and high and low X-ray spectrographs, which can help study the temperature variations in parts of the sun. [Related: Would a massive shade between Earth and the sun help slow climate change? ] One thing Im excited about is the high-energy component, says Rutgers University radio solar physicist Dale Gary . Aditya-L1 will be able to study high-energy x-rays associated with solar flare and other activity in ways that SOHO cannot. And L1 is a good position for that sort of study, he says, since there is a more stable background of radiation against which to measure solar X-rays. Past measurements made in Earth orbit had to contend with Van Allen radiation belts . Aditya-L1s ultraviolet telescope will also be unique, Gary says. It measuresultraviolet light, which has shorter wavelengths than visible light; the shortest or extreme UV light, near the X-ray spectrum, has already been measured by SOHO, but Aditya will capture the longer UV wavelengths. That could allow Aditya-L1 to study parts of the suns atmosphere that have been somewhat neglected, Gary says, such as the transition region between the chromosphere, an area about 250 miles about the suns surface, and the corona, the outermost layer of the sun that begins around 1,300 miles above the solar surface and extends, tenuously, out through the solar system. Although ground-based telescopes can take some measurements similar to Adityas,the spacecraft is also kitted out with in situ instruments, which measure features of the sun that can only be observed while in space. Its taking measurements of magnetic fields right where its sitting, and its taking measurements of the solar wind particles, Weber says. Like all solar physics missions, Aditya-L1 will inevitably serve two overall purposes. The first is to better understand how the sunand other stars work. The second is to help predict that behavior, particularly solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Those eruptions of charged particles and magnetic fields can impact Earths atmosphere and pose risks to satellites and astronauts. In March 2022, a geomagnetic storm caused by solar radiation causedEarths atmosphere to swell, knocking 40 newly launched SpaceX Starling satellites to fall out of orbit. We live with this star and so, ultimately, we want to be able to predict its behavior, Weber says. Were getting better and better at that all the time, but the only way we can predict its behavior, is to learn as much as we can even more about it. [Related: Why is space cold if the sun is hot? ] Aside from Aditya-L1s scientific mission, its success will mark another feather in the cap of ISRO, another step in that space agencys hard work to make India a space power, according to Wendy Whitman Cobb a space policy expert and instructor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (who was commenting on her own behalf, not for the US government). India has had some pretty expansive plans for the past two decades, she says. A lot of countries say theyre going to do something, but I think India is that rare example of a country whos actually doing it. Of course, space is hard. ISROs first lunar landing attempt with Chandrayaan-2, in 2019, was a failure, and theres no guarantee Aditya-L1 will make it to L1. Its a technical achievement to go into the correct orbit when you get there, Gary says. Theres a learning curve. It would be very exciting if they accomplish their goals and get everything turned on correctly. The post India just landed on the moon. Now its headed for the sun. appeared first on Popular Science . Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.popsci.com/science/aditya-l1-solar-probe-isro/ --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .