India on Saturday, launched its first space mission to study the sun, just days after becoming the first country to land an unmanned robotic spacecraft near the moon’s south pole.
According to Independent news report, The spacecraft known as Aditya-L1 which is the latest mission in India’s ambitious space program, took off around noon local time from the launchpad at Sriharikota in southern India.
Thousands of people showed up to watch the Spacecraft launch from a viewing platform at the launch center.
They were cheering and chanting as the rocket took off in a cloud of smoke and fire.
The Aditya-L1 mission is all about studying solar winds and storms which can cause disturbances on Earth commonly seen as auroras as well as problems with human electronics.
To achieve this, the spacecraft will travel to a point about 1.5 million km from Earth over the course of four months, stopping far short of the sun, which is 150 million km from Earth.
The spacecraft is named after Surya – the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya.
And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 – the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading.
According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects – such as the Sun and the Earth – cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to “hover”.
Once Aditya-L1 reaches this “parking spot”, it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.
