Aditya-1, India’s first space-based solar coronagraph which will be launched in a couple of years to study solar corona (plasma ‘atmosphere’ of the sun), will be 100% indigenous.
Aditya-1, India’s first space-based solar coronagraph which will be launched in a couple of years to study solar corona (plasma ‘atmosphere’ of the sun), will be 100% indigenous.
The advisory committee for space research, entrusted with the task of formulating the configuration for the coronagraph, has decided that critical components such as optical mirrors and the detector systems would be indigenously developed.
“The optical mirrors and the detector systems were earlier developed only in the US and Europe. They will be now built at two of Isro laboratories, the Laboratory for Electro Optics Systems in Bangalore and the Space Application centre in Ahmedabad,” Prof Jagdev Singh, principal investigator, Aditya-1, told DNA.
While the optical mirrors would be used to study the outer atmosphere of the sun, the detector systems would record images of the sun during the Aditya-1 mission, targeted at achieving a fundamental understanding of the physical processes that heat the solar corona (base to the extended), accelerate the solar wind and study coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
Prof Singh added that the decision to go indigenous was taken by the committee after it was found that importing optical mirrors and the detector systems was expensive and time-consuming.
“It was found that building such important components in India will also help us developing new technologies for future projects,” he added.
Prof Singh said that the committee, comprising members from the Isro satellite centre, Indian institute of astrophysics, Udaipur solar observatory, radio astronomy centre and the national centre for radio astrophysics, was being finalised and the fabrication of components would start in the third quarter of 2011.
Aditya-1 would be launched in 2013-14 on board the PSLV and put at an orbit of 600 km above the earth for two years (there would be high solar activity during this period).
Corona is the plasma ‘atmosphere’ of the sun or other celestial bodies, extending millions of kilometres into space.
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