Aditya-L1 - India's maiden solar mission - all set to be launched at 11:50 today

India is all set to launch its maiden solar mission on Saturday, with the India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) already having kicked off the 23 hour countdown on Friday.

The Aditya L1 mission will be launched from the space agency's Siharikota launchpad, at 11:50 am and is likely to travel for just over 125 days, traversing 1.5 million kilometres to reach a Halo orbit around the Lagrangian point L1, agreed upon globally as the closest point to the Sun.

Track the progress of India's maiden solar mission here.


Aditya-L1 is the first space-based observatory class to study the Sun and is being fired using ISRO's reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)

The final location of the sun observatory will ensure that the Aditya-L1 can continuously observe the sun without being hindered by eclipses or occultation, allowing scientists to study solar activities and their impact on space weather in real-time.

The major objectives of the mission include understanding the Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration, the initiation of Coronal Mass Ejection, and near-earth space weather and the solar wind distribution, to do which the spacecraft will carry seven scientific payloads.

Aditya-L1 will carry a Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), which is estimated to be the largest and most technologically complex payload on the craft. Integrated, tested, and calibrated at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics’ CREST (Centre for Research and Education in Science Technology) campus in Hosakote, the VELC will help scientists study the sun by sending 1,440 images of the celestial body every day to ground stations.

Saturday's launch comes close on the heels of ISRO's monumental success in its lunar mission, which successfully reached the moon on August 23 and proceeded to set up shop to study the region near the South Pole of the moon.

In the days since, the Vikram lander and the Pragyan rover have sent terabytes upon terabytes of data back to ISRO, helping the agency identify the presence of sulphur and also detect seismic activity on the lunar surface.

With inputs from Agencies