Aditya L1 update: According to reports, India's Aditya L1 mission sent by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to study the Sun may get into trouble soon.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently shared harrowing footage of last year's Parker Solar Probe hitting a solar storm as it flew through an intense CME (coronal mass injection) cloud.
The US Space Agency launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018 to study the Sun's outer corona. America's Parker Solar Probe was somehow successful in avoiding this solar storm.
Can Aditya-L1 mission also do the same or it will be in huge danger?
NASA says that at present solar activity has increased a lot. Solar storms are hitting the Earth from all sides with high frequency. It is not only the Earth that is struggling with such effects. but it is affecting other planets too.
Parker Solar Probe was launched by NASA mainly for two big reasons:
- To understand whether CMEs can interact with planetary dust in orbit around our star and take it out and second - to better predict space weather.
- This was the first time that a NASA spacecraft faced such an ordeal and managed to come out of the incident safely. During this entire process, it also collected some relevant data along the way. Such solar storms have affected satellites and spacecraft before.
In such a situation, the possibility that it may have a negative impact on India's solar mission Aditya L-1 in the future cannot be ruled out.
Will Aditya L1 be affected under such circumstances?
There are some fears that CME may also collide with Aditya L1. Two things can help ISRO spacecraft to avoid such an incident. First- the Parker Solar Probe has been designed to go very close to the Sun at a distance of 6.9 million kilometers from its surface.
At the same time, Aditya-L1 has been kept far away. It is only 15 lakh kilometers away from the Earth. Second- Indian spacecraft have been strengthened with special metals and materials to protect them from excessive radiation, CME clouds, and any other space-based hazards.
Aditya-L1 gets send off from Earth as ISRO performs key manoeuvre:
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday (September 19) announced that its maiden solar mission- Aditya-L1- has performed the Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) manoeuvre successfully and the spacecraft was now in a trajectory that will take it to the Sun-Earth L1 point. ISRO also informed that it marked the fifth consecutive time that the ISRO had successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space.
A post on the ISRO official handle on social media platform X read, “Aditya-L1 Mission | Off to Sun-Earth L1 point | The Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) manoeuvre is performed successfully. The spacecraft is now on a trajectory that will take it to the Sun-Earth L1 point. It will be injected into an orbit around L1 through a manoeuvre after about 110 days. This is the fifth consecutive time ISRO has successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space.”
Earlier, a launcher carrying the Aditya-L1 spacecraft blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Station at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
(With agencies inputs)
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