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India's maiden solar mission Aditya L1 launched
September 02, 2023

The PSLV-C57.1 rocket carrying the Aditya-L1 orbiter, lifted off successfully from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh at 11.50 am on Saturday.  

The successful launch of the maiden solar mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation came on the heels of the historic lunar landing mission -- Chandrayaan-3.  

The ISRO successfully placed a lander on the unexplored lunar south pole, a feat that put India in the record books as the first country to do so.  

According to the agency, the Aditya-L1 mission is expected to reach the observation point in four months.  

It will be placed in a halo orbit around Lagrangian Point 1 (or L1), which is 1.5 million km away from the Earth in the direction of the sun.  

It will carry seven different payloads to have a detailed study of the sun, four of which will observe the light from the sun and the other three will measure in-situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.  

The largest and technically most challenging payload on Aditya-L1 is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph or VELC.  

VELC was integrated, tested, and calibrated at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics' Centre for Research and Education in Science Technology campus in Hosakote in collaboration with ISRO.  -- ANI
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