India has launched its first solar observation mission, just days after becoming the first country to land near the Moon’s south pole.
At 11:50 a.m. (India time), Aditya-L1 blasted off from the Sriharikota launch site. It will travel 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) from Earth, accounting for 1% of the Earth-Sun distance. The journey will take four months.
Surya, the Hindu god of the Sun, also known as Aditya, is the name of India’s first space-based mission to explore the solar system’s largest object. L1 stands for Lagrange Point 1, the precise location between the Sun and Earth to which the Indian spacecraft is en route.
A Lagrange point is a location where the gravitational influences of two big objects, such as the Sun and the Earth, cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to “hover.”
Aditya-L1 will be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth once it reaches this “parking spot.” This also means that the satellite will use relatively little fuel to function.
