Aditya L-1 mission expected to be launched by the end of 2021

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Aditya L-1 mission is expected to be launched by the end of this year that was planned to be launched in the first half of the 2020 but was delayed due to COVID pandemic.

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• The satellite would travel 1.5 million kilometers from the earth to study the sun’s atmosphere.
• The satellite will be sent to the L1 or Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Sun.
• Here the gravitational pull of both the bodies on the satellite is equal to the centripetal force required to keep satellite in orbit.

The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in a 800 km low earth orbit. A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.

Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth. The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives.

Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona. The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona. Aditya-L1 with additional experiments can now provide observations of Sun's Corona (soft and hard X-ray, Emission lines in the visible and NIR), Chromosphere (UV) and photosphere (broadband filters).

• National space agency has also planned to launch first unmanned flight under the Gaganyaan mission by the end of December 2021.
• The 10th satellite in the NaVIC constellation is also scheduled to be launched this year.