India's first solar mission Aditya L1 likely to launch in third quarter of 2022: ISRO

India's first solar mission, which was delayed from early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2022, at the same time as the country's second space observatory Xposat, which will aid astronomers in studying cosmic sources such as pulsars and supernovae, according to senior officials from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). At a briefing this week, Dr Unnikrishnan Nair, director of the human spaceflight centre, stated that the solar mission Aditya L1 will be launched in the third quarter of next year (2022) and will reveal deeper insights into the beginning of the cosmos and many other unknowns.

The spacecraft will be launched 1.5 million kilometres from Earth to L 1 Lagrangian, a position between the Earth and the Sun where the gravitational pull of both bodies on the satellite is equivalent to the centripetal force required to keep the satellite in orbit. It's like a parking lot in a space where you may see various events without being disturbed.

The other strictly scientific mission that the space agency will conduct next year is Xposat. It will be launched aboard a small satellite launch vehicle that is still in development. The new launch vehicle is expected to fly for the first time in December of this year. After two successful development flights, ISRO declares a launch vehicle mission-ready.

Solar Mission Aditya L1

ISRO will be able to investigate the polarisation of celestial occurrences thanks to Xposat. It will be launched via an SSLV that is currently in development. The first development flight is scheduled for the end of this year. Academicians are eager to see the data gathered by this mission, Nair said.

The SSLV, which is being designed for commercial small satellite launches, costs only 30 crores as opposed to 120 crores for a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), said reports. The SSLV can be assembled in seven days by a team of six scientists, compared to a team of 600 that takes several months to assemble a PSLV.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the number of launches ISRO could conduct in 2020 and 2021. There have only been four launches in the last two years, one of which was a purely commercial launch, with the main payload being a Brazilian earth observation satellite dubbed Amazonia-1.

Image: PTI