India's sun mission: Aditya-L1 — 125-day voyage

India’s first solar space observatory will be launched from Sriharikota on Saturday and placed into a halo orbit around Sun-Earth Lagrangian Point 1 (L1) by mid-Jan

Objectives

• Study of physics of solar corona
• Solar wind acceleration
• Dynamics of atmosphere
• Wind distribution
• Temperature anisotropy
• Origin of coronal mass ejections and solar flares
• Near-earth space weather

PSLV C57 Launch vehicle

11.50 am Launch time

4 months Travel time

1.5 mn km Distance

7 payloads

• Of seven payloads, four will observe sunlight, while other 3 will measure in-situ parameters of plasma & magnetic fields
• Primary payload Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) will send 1,440 images per day to ground station
• 190-kg payload will send images for 5 years, nominal life of satellite, but may last longer; first images are expected by Feb-end

Powerful ‘XL’ varient of PSLV being used, similar to 2008 Chandrayaan-1 & 2013 Mars missions