Aditya L1 shall be the first space based Indian mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth. A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time. The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors. Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium
The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide most crucial informations to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particle and fields etc.
The instruments of Aditya-L1 are tuned to observe the solar atmosphere mainly the chromosphere and corona. In-situ instruments will observe the local environment at L1. There are total seven payloads on-board with four of them carrying out remote sensing of the Sun and three of them carrying in-situ observation.
Payload | Capability |
Visible Emission Line Coronagraph(VELC) | Corona/Imaging & Spectroscopy |
Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) | Photosphere and Chromosphere Imaging- Narrow & Broadband |
Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) | ]Soft X-ray spectrometer: Sun-as-a-star observation |
High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer(HEL1OS) | Hard X-ray spectrometer: Sun-as-a-star observation |
Payload | Capability |
Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment(ASPEX) | Solar wind/Particle Analyzer Protons & Heavier Ions with directions |
Plasma Analyser Package For Aditya (PAPA)[/BGCOLOR] | Solar wind/Particle Analyzer Electrons & Heavier Ions with directions |
Advanced Tri-axial High Resolution Digital Magnetometers | In-situ magnetic field (Bx, By and Bz) |
PSLV-C57/Aditya-L1 Mission
January 25, 2024
Successful Deployment of Magnetometer Boom on Aditya-L1 in Halo Orbit
January 6, 2024
Aditya-L1 solar observatory is successfully inserted into Halo-Orbit around Sun-Earth L1
December 8, 2023
In-orbit Health Status of Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA)
The SUIT payload captures full-disk images of the Sun in near ultraviolet wavelengths
December 1, 2023
Solar wind Ion Spectrometer (SWIS) in the Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment(ASPEX) payload is made operational
November 7, 2023
HEL1OS captures first High-Energy X-ray glimpse of Solar Flares
October 8, 2023
A Trajectory Correction Maneuvre (TCM), originally provisioned, was performed on October 6, 2023, for about 16 s. It was needed to correct the trajectory evaluated after tracking the Trans-Lagrangean Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) maneuvre performed on September 19, 2023. TCM ensures that the spacecraft is on its intended path towards the Halo orbit insertion around L1
September 30, 2023
The spacecraft has escaped the sphere of Earth's influence, on its way to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1(L1).
September 25, 2023
An assessment of space situation around Sun-Earth Lagrange Point L1
September 19, 2023
The spacecraft is currently travelling to the Sun-Earth L1 point.
September 18, 2023
Aditya-L1 has commenced the collection of scientific data.
September 15, 2023
Fourth Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#4) is performed successfully. The new orbit attained is 256 km x 121973 km.
September 10, 2023
Third Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#3) is performed successfully. The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km.
September 05, 2023
Second Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#2) is performed successfully. The new orbit attained is 282 km x 40225 km.
September 03, 2023
The next maneuvre (EBN#2) is scheduled for September 5, 2023, around 03:00 Hrs. IST
The first Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#1) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. The new orbit attained is 245 km x 22459 km
The satellite is healthy and operating nominally
September 02, 2023
India's first solar observatory has begun its journey to the destination of Sun-Earth L1 point
The vehicle has placed the satellite precisely into its intended orbit
The launch of Aditya-L1 by PSLV-C57 is accomplished successfully
Scientists have developed a new technique to track the huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun, disrupting space weather and causing geomagnetic storms, satellite failures, and power outages.
As the ejections from the Sun, technically called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), cause various disturbances of the space environment, forecasting their arrival time is very important. However, forecasting accuracy is hindered by limited CME observations in interplanetary space.
Software named Computer Aided CME Tracking Software (CACTus) based on a computer vision algorithm was so far used to detect and characterise such eruptions automatically in the outer corona where these eruptions cease to show accelerations and propagate with a nearly constant speed.
However, this algorithm could not be applied to the inner corona observations due to the vast acceleration experienced by these eruptions. This severely limited the capability to track the eruptions as CMEs accelerate in the lower corona. Moreover, with the advancement in space technology, there has been a tremendous increase in the amount of data obtained from spacecraft. To identify and track the solar eruptions in huge number of images can become tedious if done manually.
Research led by Mr. Ritesh Patel, Dr. Vaibhav Pant, and Prof. Dipankar Banerjee from Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES), Nainital, an autonomous institute under DST, Government of India, along with their collaborators from Royal Observatory of Belgium, have led to the development of an algorithm, CMEs Identification in Inner Solar Corona (CIISCO) to detect and track the accelerating solar eruption in the lower corona. CIISCO has been successfully tested on several eruptions observed by space observatories, including Solar Dynamics Observatory and Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory, PROBA2/SWAP launched by NASA and ESA, respectively. The research was published in the Solar Physics journal.
The parameters determined by CIISCO are useful to characterise these eruption in the lower corona, a region where the properties of such eruptions are less known. An implementation of CIISCO on the large volume of data available from space observatories mentioned above will be helpful to improve our understanding of eruptions in the inner corona. As India’s first solar mission, Aditya-L1, will be observing this region of the solar corona, implementation of CIISCO on the Aditya-L1 data will provide new insight into the CME properties in this less explored region.
Our Sun, being the primary source of energy for our solar system has a significant influence on our lives, and has always instilled a curiosity in humankind.. Though we have a fairly good understanding of the origin of energy and other various aspects of the Sun, several potentially life-changing phenomena still remain a mystery. Being the nearest star, understanding the Sun also allows us to learn about other distant stars better.
A team of scientists from the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, used observations of the Sun in soft X-rays with Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) onboard ISRO's Chandrayaan-2 mission during the deepest solar minimum of the past hundred years to learn exciting details about the solar corona. For the first time, absolute abundances of elemental Mg, Al, Si in the quiet solar corona are derived. The team discovered and characterized around 100 “sub-A class” microflares in the quiet corona providing new insight into coronal heating puzzle.Some of these mysteries are related to the hot outer atmosphere of the Sun, known as ‘corona’, which emits profusely in ultra-violet and X-ray wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. We know that the corona consists of ionized gas at temperatures exceeding one million Kelvin, which is much higher than photospheric temperature of 6000 K, the visible surface temperature of the Sun. However, this observation is against the natural expectation that the temperatures should reduce as we go away from the source of energy, and this is known as the ‘coronal heating problem’. From observations, such as the presence of even hotter corona, called active regions above the Sunspots (dark patches seen in visible images of the Sun) where the magnetic fields are known to be stronger, it is suggested that the magnetic fields have an important role in the coronal heating. While there are different theories regarding the actual mechanism, one of these relies on the occurrence of a large number of small solar flares called ‘nanoflares’. Another puzzling observation about the corona is that certain elements are found to have abundances three to four times higher in active regions than in the photosphere. This happens for elements which are easier to ionize, or require lesser energy to ionize. In more technical terms, these elements have their First Ionization Potential (FIP) lower than 10 eV, and hence this phenomenon is generally termed as ‘FIP bias’. The exact reason behind the FIP bias and its origin remains an open question.
The XSM, designed and developed by PRL with support from various ISRO centres, provides measurement of soft X-ray (1-15 keV) spectrum of the Sun. The XSM also supports the quantitative measurements of elemental abundances of the lunar surface using the companion payload CLASS (Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer) developed by URSC, Bangalore, which measures the X-ray fluorescence spectrum from the lunar surface. At present, XSM is the only instrument that provides soft X-ray spectral measurements of the Sun, i.e., measures the intensity of X-ray in different energies over the 1 to 15 keV. More importantly, XSM provides such measurements with very good energy resolution at every second, the highest cadence for any instrument so far.
XSM started observations of the Sun in September 2019, during the period of solar minimum when typically there were very few Sunspots and active regions on the Sun. The solar minimum of 2019-2020 was even more peculiar as the Sun was extremely quiet, and its activity was at the lowest level over the past century. This provided a unique opportunity for XSM to observe the quiet corona without active regions for long periods. The solar X-ray flux as observed by the XSM during this period is shown in the figure. Intervals highlighted with blue color correspond to a period of 76 days when no active regions were present on the solar disk, and XSM was observing the quiet corona.
A remarkable and surprising observation is the detection of a large number (98) of extremely small flares in the quiet corona (see Figure below). These flares are so small that their intensity is well below the standard scale to classify solar flares (i.e. A, B, C, M, and X class flares, where each class is 10 times more intense than previous), and hence these are termed as “sub-A class microflares”. Using the X-ray spectra of these microflares obtained with the XSM and contemporary images in Extreme Ultra-violet obtained with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the energy content of these flares could be estimated. This was the first observation and statistical study of such a large sample of microflares in the quiet Sun, supporting the hypothesis of the presence of even smaller scale flares everywhere on the solar corona that could be responsible for the coronal heating.
The X-ray emission over these 76 days, excluding the durations of the microflares, is unusually constant. This is the lowest intensity of X-ray emission observed from the Sun since space-borne observations began. Analysis of the XSM spectra of the quiet Sun, excluding the microflares, provided the measurement of abundances of various elements. The abundances of the low FIP elements Mg, Al, and Si were estimated and found to be lower than the abundances seen in active region corona but higher than that in the photosphere. This is the first report of measurement of abundances as well as reduced FIP bias in the quiet Sun. Our observations of FIP bias in the quiet Sun provides significant inputs towards understanding the FIP bias and suggests that it arises due to the presence of Alfvén waves in the closed magnetic loops.
These outstanding science results on the solar corona and heliophysics obtained during a unique solar extremely quiet period using a sensitive instrument XSM aboard Chandryayaan-2 observations are published in two companion papers in the May issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Figure : Panels (a) and (b) show the X-ray flux in the 1–15 keV energy range with a time cadence of 120 seconds, as measured by the XSM during two observing seasons. Different background shades represent activity levels on the Sun, with orange representing periods when active regions are present; pink representing periods of enhanced activity visible in both the XSM light curve as well as EUV/X-ray images but not classified as Active Regions; and blue representing periods selected for the present study when no major activity was observed on the Sun. The micro flares detected during the quiet periods are marked with red points, representing their peaks; and red vertical bars, representing their time.Both the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter and the XSM instrument are performing extremely well, and expected to provide many more exciting and new results.
Name of the filter (emission lines) | Wavelength (nm) | Features |
NB1 | 214 | Photosphere, Sunspot, Plages and limb darkening |
NB2 | 276 | Photosphere, Sunspot, Plages, limb darkening |
NB3 (Mg II k) | 279 | Chromosphere, Sunspots, Plages, Quiet Sun, filaments |
NB4 (Mg II h) | 280 | Chromosphere, Sunspots, Plages, Quiet Sun, filaments |
NB5 | 283 | Photosphere, Sunspot, Plages, limb darkening |
NB6 | 300 | Photosphere, Sunspot, Plages, limb darkening |
NB7 | 388 | Photosphere, Sunspot, limb darkening |
NB8 (Ca II h) | 396.8 | Chromosphere, Sunspots, Plages, Quiet Sun. |
BB1 | 200-242 | Photosphere, limb darkening, Plages, Sunspots |
BB2 | 242-300 | Photosphere, limb darkening, Plages, Sunspots |
BB3 | 320-360 | Photosphere, limb darkening, Sunspots |