Aditya

Aditya, (Sanskrit: आदित्य, lit: Sun^[2])  pronunciation (help·info) or Aditya-1 is a spacecraft whose mission is to study the Sun. It was conceptualised by the Advisory Committee for Space Research in January 2008.^[1] It has been designed^[3] and will be built and launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).^[1] ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair announced the approval of this mission on 10 November 2008.^[4]

Spacecraft

Aditya is proposed to be sent to space by 2012 to study the solar corona. This part of the Sun has temperatures of over one million degrees, with raging solar winds that reach a velocity of up to 1000 km a second. The satellite will carry as its payload an advanced solar coronagraph.^[1]

It will be a small 100 kilograms (220 lb) satellite projected to cost about 50 crore (US$10 million),^[1] and likely to be placed into a near earth orbit of 600 km. The spacecraft's mission will be to study the fundamental problems of coronal heating, and other phenomena that take place in the Earth's magnetosphere.

Objectives

• to study the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME)
• to study the crucial physical parameters for space weather such as the coronal magnetic field structures, evolution of the coronal magnetic field etc.^[5]

Progress

This is one of the first scheduled projects in a road map formulated by the Advisory Committee for Space Research.^[1].A working group of individuals from the ISRO Satellite Centre, Udaipur Solar Observatory, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy Centre, National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, and several universities.^[1] was constituted to work out the optimum configuration for the coronagraph, among other parameters. The design of solar coronograph has been completed by Indian Institute of Astrophysics.^[6]

ISRO is working on development of sensors and thermal structures of the satellite after which a prototype of the satellite is expected to be built by 2011.^[6]

References