India conducts its first mission after famous lunar landing

India has sent its first spacecraft to study the sun, which is a big achievement for their space program.

The spacecraft named Aditya-L1 was launched at 11:50 a. mIt took off from Sriharikota, an island near the Bay of Bengal. On Saturday, at 2:20 am Eastern Time. And it’s going to a parking spot in space about 930,000 miles (1. 5 million kilometers) away from Earth.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft successfully launched, which happened less than two weeks after India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, made history by landing the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the moon’s surface. India’s achievement of landing a vehicle on the moon makes them the fourth country globally, and the second country in the 21st century, to accomplish this.

The mission is going to end next week.

Right now, Aditya-L1 is going towards a place called Lagrange point 1. This place is in between the sun and Earth, where the pull of gravity from both the sun and Earth is balanced. That place will let Aditya-L1 stay in space, at a good spot for watching the sun’s activities, while using only a small amount of fuel.

According to the space agency, this position will allow for a better opportunity to observe solar activities and their impact on space weather in real-time.

The spacecraft has seven tools for studying things in space. Four of these tools will be pointed directly at the sun. The other tools will study particles and magnetic fields that come from the sun and pass through a specific point in space called Lagrange point 1.

The mission’s main goals are to study the sun’s upper atmosphere and different solar activities, like coronal mass ejections which are huge bursts of plasma from the outer layer of the sun.

The data collected from Aditya-L1’s experiments will help us understand space weather better. Space weather refers to the magnetic waves in our solar system. Space storms can cause problems on Earth when they enter our atmosphere. They can sometimes affect satellites, radio communications, and power grids. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said this.

India’s Aditya-L1 will contribute to the data collected by other missions studying the sun, like NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. The Parker Solar Probe is the first spacecraft to come into contact with the sun, which happened in 2021.

India’s first dedicated solar mission contributes to the country’s reputation as an up-and-coming space superpower.