Days after becoming the first country to land a vehicle on the Moon's largely unexplored south pole, India's space agency announced Monday that it will launch a satellite to study the Sun.

"The launch of Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is scheduled for 2 September," the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Aditya, which means "Sun" in Hindi, will be placed in halo orbit in a region of space about 1.5 million kilometres (930,000 miles) from Earth, providing the craft with a continuous clear view of the Sun.

"This will provide a greater advantage to observe solar activities and its impact on space weather in real time," ISRO said in a statement.

The spacecraft will carry seven payloads to observe the outermost layers of the Sun, known as the photosphere and chromosphere, using electromagnetic and particle field detectors.

Among various objectives, it will study the driving forces for space weather, including better understanding the dynamics of the solar wind.

While NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have previously deployed orbiters to study the Sun, this will be the first such mission for India.

The unmanned Chandrayaan-3 - "Moon Vehicle" in Sanskrit - landed on the lunar surface last week, making India the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to successfully land on the Moon.

The latest milestone in India's ambitious but low-cost space programme has sparked celebrations in the world's most populous nation.

India has a relatively low-budget space programme, but its size and momentum have increased dramatically since it first sent a probe into lunar orbit in 2008.

Experts say India has been able to keep costs low by copying and adapting existing technology and by having a large number of highly skilled engineers who are paid a fraction of their foreign counterparts' wages.

India became the first Asian country to put a vehicle into Mars orbit in 2014 and will launch a three-day crewed mission to Earth's orbit next year.

It is also planning a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the Moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus in the next two years.

 

Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/