India sends mission towards the sun

India sent a mission to the Sun to examine it more closely. The mission, called Aditya-L1, took off from the Satish Dhawan spaceport, near the coast of Andhra Pradesh state, just before 12pm (local time) on Saturday. “Start normally,” it said. The probe is expected to travel for around four months (125 days) until it reaches an orbit around the Sun around 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

The Aditya-L1 mission is named after the Sanskrit word for the sun god Aditya. If successful, you should have an uninterrupted view of the sun, meaning no darkness. At 1,475 kg, Aditya-L1 is lighter than India’s recently launched lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3. A rocket will first put it into orbit around the Earth and then move toward the sun.

The satellite’s payload will be used to analyze the outer layers of the sun. Specifically, solar activities such as wind acceleration and oscillation will be examined. The mission is expected to last just over five years. The data on solar phenomena that India intends to collect is intended to help better understand the climate on Earth and other planets. They are also intended to help better protect communications and weather satellites around Earth, the ISRO spokesperson said.

So far, the US, China, Europe and Japan, among others, have examined the Sun – alone or in joint missions.