The launch window for the mission opens in August. Aditya-L1 carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere of Sun. The ISRO chief was at the India Today Conclave South 2023

New Delhi: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch the ambitious mission to explore the Sun, Aditya L1, in August this year.

ISRO chief confirmed that the launch window for the mission opens in August and the satellite is being prepared to be sent outside Earth.

The ISRO chief was at the India Today Conclave South 2023 to discuss the space quest.

"Aditya L1 is going to go in August. We have prepared the satellite, ISRO chief said, adding that it will be sent to four times the distance from Earth to the Moon at Lagrange-1 and leave it there. It is a field where gravity between Sun and Earth is neutralized and if we sent something at this location, it stays there," Somnath said.

The L1 point of the Earth-Sun system provides an uninterrupted view of the sun and is currently home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite SOHO from Nasa.

The ISRO boss said, "It will look at the Sun for as long as it lives. They designed it for five years. It will look at the corona of the sun, which has lots of activity and coronal mass ejections."

A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) ejects billions of tons of material into space that often hit Earth triggering auroras and, on some occasions, even damaging satellites.

He stressed that scientists have put in place instruments to look at Sun in the Aditya mission, which will predict coronal mass ejection, do remote sensing of the sun, and give a warning if such ejections come towards Earth.

Aditya-L1 carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle detectors.

Four payloads will directly view the Sun from the unique vantage point of L1, and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1.