SPACE | India launches rocket to observe sun days after historic moon landing.

India's space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), successfully launched its Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon on July 22, 2019. Just days after this historic moon landing, ISRO has now launched a rocket to observe the sun.

The advanced satellite, called the Solar Monitoring Observatory (Aditya-L1), was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on September 2, 2019. The rocket, known as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C37), carries the Aditya-L1 satellite into space. 

The Aditya-L1 satellite will be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point (L1), which is 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. From this vantage point, the satellite will continuously observe the sun and monitor its activities, including solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other phenomena. The mission aims to study the dynamics of the sun's outermost layers, the corona, and provide valuable data to understand the sun's influence on Earth's climate and weather patterns.

The satellite is equipped with seven scientific instruments, including coronagraphs, which will capture images of the solar corona to study its magnetic field structures and its influence on the solar wind. Aditya-L1 will also carry other instruments to monitor solar eruptions and measure the intensity of solar radiation.

This mission marks India's first dedicated solar observatory and highlights the country's growing expertise in space science and exploration. The Aditya-L1 satellite is expected to provide valuable data to improve our understanding of the sun and its impact on Earth, contributing to space weather forecasting and helping to mitigate potential risks to satellites, power grids, and communication systems.