Bangalore(S.N)-Following the monumental achievement of Chandrayaan, ISRO is setting its sights on an even more audacious goal – exploring the Sun. Riding the wave of India’s remarkable triumph, Khul Ke, the indigenous social networking app fostering meaningful dialogues, takes immense pride in offering an exclusive glimpse into ISRO’s next groundbreaking undertaking on the 1st September, 2023. This venture comes on the heels of the resounding success of the Chandrayaan 3 mission and involves launching an orbiting satellite dedicated to scrutinizing the Sun, the ultimate source of life and illumination on our planet.
In an engaging conversation, our host had the privilege of engaging with Professor Annapurni Subramaniam, the illustrious Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru. With over three decades of expertise in exploring diverse stellar populations, Prof. Subramaniam sheds light on ISRO’s upcoming Aditya L1 mission. This mission is driven by a profound quest not only to unravel the enigmas of the Sun’s outermost layer, the Corona, but also to amass crucial data for accurate prediction of coronal mass ejections. These eruptions, under extreme scenarios, can disrupt satellite apparatus and terrestrial power grids, making this research even more pivotal.
On the reasoning behind why the Sun’s corona has been chosen as a focus of Aditya’s study, she says, “The temperature of the sun’s surface is much cooler than its core, but suddenly as we approach its corona, the outermost layer of the sun, the temperature suddenly shoots up. Why the Corona is so hot, is something we still are figuring out and that’s what Aditya will attempt to observe.”
She further elaborates on the significance of this line of research, “During the peak active period of the Sun, the magnetic activity causes a lot of plasma ejections from the Sun, we call these coronal mass ejections, or the ‘Sun being angry’ so to say. These plasma ejections are high energy particles that can cause a lot of problems if you’re thinking about further space exploration. Even now, a lot of satellites may have to power down, because these high energy particles may disrupt the electronics. This is something that we need to study more to be able to make more accurate predictions.”
She further establishes how the Aditya mission is meant to function, saying, “The Aditya L1 Mission is a mission to study the Sun from a new vantage point. This point is not on the surface of the earth, it is in fact, fairly well away from the earth, and will be situated in an area called the Lagrange point 1. To put it simply, it’s like a null point where gravitationally our satellite will be less disturbed and will require less energy to orbit… Aditya will thereby never sleep, in the entirety of its orbit. It will constantly be collecting particle data as it sweeps across the inner orbits of the solar system at 1.5 million kilometres, while continuously watching the sun at the same time.”
She relays how ISRO has been working on these missions for over a decade and are naturally anticipating the beginning of this new chapter in space exploration, especially after the phenomenal success of Chandrayaan 3, “We are very excited for the mission. There’s a lot of learning to do and our teams have worked very hard. It’s a challenging mission for ISRO to do but we’re always looking forward to doing new things, crossing new barriers and going to new places. That’s the sentiment reverberating here right now.”
Khul Ke is proud to hold such engaging and thoughtful conversations through its RoundTable discussions. Users can connect with influential personalities from various fields, helping disseminate information that would have otherwise been out of reach for the common public. Khul Ke empowers its users with knowledge that broadens their horizons.
