The Aditya-L1 launch, which derives its name from the Hindi word for the sun, comes after India defeated Russia late last month to become the first nation to set foot on the south pole of the moon. Despite having a more potent rocket than Russia, India’s Chandrayaan-3 out-endured the Luna-25 to complete a flawless landing.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to travel about 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) over four months to a kind of parking lot in space where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.
After the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, these positions are known as Lagrange Points.
According to Somak Raychaudhury, who worked on the development of some observatory components, the project has the potential to generate a “big bang in terms of science,” adding that energetic particles emitted by the sun can strike satellites that regulate communications on earth.
“There have been episodes when major communications have gone down because a satellite has been hit by a big corona emission. Satellites in low earth orbit are the main focus of global private players, which makes the Aditya L1 mission a very important project,” he said.
With the success of projects like Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Starlink communications network, scientists hope to learn more about the impact of solar radiation on the thousands of satellites in orbit.
