ISRO’s major announcement on ‘Aditya-L1’ mission and Indian space station

India’s first solar mission Aditya-L1 will reach its destination – the Lagrangian point (L1) – on January 6, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairperson S Somanath said.

“Aditya-L1 will enter the L1 point on January 6. That is what is expected. The exact time will be announced at an appropriate time,” news agency PTI quoted Somanath as saying.

Somanath was interacting with reporters on the sidelines of the Bharatiya Vigyan Sammelan organised by Vijnana Bharati, an NGO working to popularise science, in Ahmedabad.

“When it reaches the L1 point, we have to fire the engine once again so that it does not go further. It will go to that point, and once it reaches that point, it will rotate around it and will be trapped at L1,” he said.

The ISRO chairperson further said when Aditya-L1 reaches its destination, it will help measure various events happening on the Sun for the next five years.

“Once it is successfully placed on L1 point, it will be there for the next five years, gathering all the data which are very important not for India alone but for the entire world. The data will be very useful to understand the dynamics of the Sun and how it affects our life,” the ISRO chief said.

Somanath also said that how India is going to become a technologically powerful country is very important. He pointed out that ISRO has made a plan to build an Indian space station, called the ‘Bharatiya Space Station’ during the ‘Amrit Kaal’ as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s instructions.

“In the space sector we are seeing an emergence of new actors…We are going to support, encourage and build the economy around the new generation,” he said, adding that India cannot become a leader in everything, but it should focus on the sectors where it can.

What is the Aditya L-1 mission?

Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission, was launched on September 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota.

The mission aims to study the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from Earth.

Earlier this month, ISRO said that the Solar Wind Ion Spectrometer (SWIS), the second instrument in the Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX) payload is operational.

According to the space agency, ASPEX comprises two instruments – the Solar Wind Ion Spectrometer (SWIS) and the SupraThermal and Energetic Particle Spectrometer (STEPS). While the STEPS instrument started operating on September 10 while, the SWIS instrument was activated on November 2, 2023.