Tag : AdityaL1

New Delhi (The Hawk): India’s Aditya-L1, a space observatory with 7 payloads heading for a vantage point to study the Sun has started countdown for its journey. It had its beginnings in preliminary/initial discussions between the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) about possible observations of the solar corona using indigenous space based telescopes. IIA, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), had initially proposed a ‘suitable coronagraph’ payload to be mounted on a small satellite offered by ISRO. This ‘suitable coronagraph’ later graduated to the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and still prevails as the primary payload, even as India’s Solar study ambitions expanded, making it a national initiative with multi-institutional collaboration. Led by IIA, the VELC was designed, assembled, characterised, tested and integrated at Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST) campus in Hosakote and delivered in close collaboration with ISRO. A Clean Room of international standard (India's first large-scale “Class 10” Clean Room) was constructed for the purpose inside its MGK Menon Laboratory. ISRO made the mirrors and detectors and provided them to IIA, while IIA delivered the completed VELC to ISRO on 26 Jan 2023. The VELC will image the Sun's atmosphere, the corona, closer to the Sun than ever before, at high resolution and time cadence. The payload has 40 different optical elements of high precision and will be kept at a temperature of 22 degrees celsius in space. In addition, Aditya-L1 carries an ultraviolet imager, two X-ray spectrometers, and four in-situ instruments to measure plasma parameters. These are made by vario ...