India, which last week became the first country to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, an unexplored area, will launch a satellite on September 2 to study the sun, the Indian Space Agency announced on Monday.
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“Launch of Aditya-L1, India’s first space-based observatory (designed to study the Sun), is scheduled for September 2,” the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced on X (formerly Twitter).
Aditya, “Sun” in Hindi, will be placed in a halo orbit in a sector of space 1.5 million kilometers from Earth and will provide continuous clear images of the Sun.
“This will provide a greater benefit for observing solar activity and its impact on space weather in real time,” ISRO said.
The spacecraft will carry seven modules to observe the Sun’s outer layers, the photosphere and chromosphere, using electromagnetic field and particle detectors.
In particular, he will work on solar meteorology to better understand the dynamics of solar winds.
NASA and the European Space Agency have already put spacecraft into orbit to study the Sun, but this will be a first for India.
The moon landing by India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, which means “moon ship” in Sanskrit, last week made India the fourth country to have accomplished such an operation, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
India’s aerospace program has a relatively modest budget, but it has increased significantly since its first attempt to orbit the moon in 2008.
According to industry experts, India manages to keep costs down by replicating and adapting existing space technology for its purposes, thanks in particular to the large number of highly qualified engineers who are paid significantly less than their foreign counterparts.
In 2014, India became the first Asian country to launch a spacecraft into orbit around the planet Mars. A three-day manned mission around the world is to be launched by next year.
A joint mission with Japan is also planned to send a probe to the moon by 2025 and a mission to Venus within two years.