Wednesday 19 June 2024
Tuesday 29 August 2023
GSLV-F12/NVS-01 Mission
GSLV-F12/NVS-01 mission is accomplished successfully on Monday, May 29, 2023. This Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) mission deployed NVS-01 navigation satellite, weighing about 2232 kg, into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit. The vehicle lifted off at 10:42 hours IST from the second launch pad at SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota and injected the satellite after about 19 minutes of flight.
NVS-01 is the first of the second-generation satellites envisaged for the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) services. NVS series of satellites will sustain and augment the NavIC with enhanced features. This series incorporates L1 band signals additionally to widen the services. For the first time, an indigenous atomic clock will be flown in NVS-01.
India’s First Mission to Study the Sun, Aditya-L1, will be Launched by June-July: ISRO chairman
Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) handed over to ISRO, the Visible Line Emission Coronagraph (VELC), the primary payload on board Aditya-L1, which is India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the Sun, to be launched by June or July. The handing over ceremony was held in the presence of the ISRO Chairman S Somanath at the Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology (CREST) campus of IIA. IIA said it has successfully finished assembling, testing and calibrating the VELC, which is the largest and one of the most technically challenging of the seven payloads/telescopes that will fly on Aditya-L1, at its CREST campus.
About The Payloads In Aditya-L1:
In total Aditya-L1 has seven payloads, of which the primary payload – the VELC, is designed and fabricated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA, Bengaluru). The other six payloads are being developed by the ISRO and other scientific institutions. Understanding the effect of the Sun on the Earth and its surroundings has become very important now and Aditya-L1 aims to shed light on this topic. The payload will be taken to the R. Rao Satellite Centre (Bengaluru), where it will be integrated with the Aditya-L1 satellite and will undergo further testing, evaluation and finally launched using the PSLV.
About The Visible Line Emission Coronagraph (VELC) Payload:
- The VELC payload will observe the corona continuously and the data provided by it is expected to answer many outstanding problems in the field of solar astronomy.
- No other solar coronagraph in space has the ability to image the solar corona as close to the solar disk as VELC can (can image it as close as 1.05 times the solar radius).
- It can also do imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry at the same time, and can take observations at a very high resolution.
What is the Aditya-L1 Mission:
- Aditya (in Sanskrit means Sun) is a planned coronagraphy spacecraft to study solar atmosphere (solar corona – outermost part).
- It is currently being designed and developed by ISRO and various other Indian research institutes.
- First dedicated Indian mission to observe the Sun, it is planned to be launched in June-July 2023 aboard a PSLV-XL launch vehicle. It was conceptualised in 2008 and was initially envisaged as a small 400 kg satellite.
- The mission’s objectives have subsequently been broadened and it is now intended to be a comprehensive observatory of the sun and space environment.
- It will be placed in an orbit around the Lagrange (L1) point (L1 is about 1.5 million kms from Earth) between Earth and the sun (so renamed – “Aditya-L1“).
What are Lagrange Points:
- Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent tend to stay there, as the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
- These points in space can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position.
- The first Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system, L1 orbit, allows Aditya-L1 to look at the sun continuously.
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Aditya L1 shall be the first space based Indian mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth. A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time. The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors. Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium
The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial informations to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc.
Science Objectives:
The major science objectives of Aditya-L1 mission are:
- Study of Solar upper atmospheric (chromosphere and corona) dynamics.
- Study of chromospheric and coronal heating, physics of the partially ionized plasma, initiation of the coronal mass ejections, and flares
- Observe the in-situ particle and plasma environment providing data for the study of particle dynamics from the Sun.
- Physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism.
- Diagnostics of the coronal and coronal loops plasma: Temperature, velocity and density.
- Development, dynamics and origin of CMEs.
- Identify the sequence of processes that occur at multiple layers (chromosphere, base and extended corona) which eventually leads to solar eruptive events.
- Magnetic field topology and magnetic field measurements in the solar corona .
- Drivers for space weather (origin, composition and dynamics of solar wind .
Aditya-L1 Payloads:
The instruments of Aditya-L1 are tuned to observe the solar atmosphere mainly the chromosphere and corona. In-situ instruments will observe the local environment at L1. There are total seven payloads on-board with four of them carrying out remote sensing of the Sun and three of them carrying in-situ observation.
Payloads along with their major capability of scientific investigation.
Type | Sl. No. | Payload | Capability |
---|---|---|---|
Remote Sensing Payloads | 1 | Visible Emission Line Coronagraph(VELC) | Corona/Imaging & Spectroscopy |
2 | Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) | Photosphere and Chromosphere Imaging- Narrow & Broadband | |
3 | Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) | Soft X-ray spectrometer: Sun-as-a-star observation | |
4 | High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer(HEL1OS) | Hard X-ray spectrometer: Sun-as-a-star observation | |
In-situ Payloads | |||
5 | Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment(ASPEX) | Solar wind/Particle Analyzer Protons & Heavier Ions with directions | |
6 | Plasma Analyser Package For Aditya (PAPA) | Solar wind/Particle Analyzer Electrons & Heavier Ions with directions | |
7 | Advanced Tri-axial High Resolution Digital Magnetometers | In-situ magnetic field (Bx, By and Bz). |
Back Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander records 70 degrees Celsius on moon surface, ISRO says 'higher than expected'
ISRO on 27 August released a graph of the temperature variation on the lunar surface and a senior scientist of the space agency has expressed surprise over the high temperature recorded on the Moon.
The space agency shared an update saying that Chandra's Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) payload onboard Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander measured the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil around the pole to understand the thermal behaviour of the Moon's surface.
While speaking to news agency PTI, ISRO scientist B H M Darukesha said, "We all believed that the temperature could be somewhere around 20 degree centigrade to 30 degree centigrade on the surface but it is 70 degree centigrade. This is surprisingly higher than what we had expected."