India gears up for launch of maiden solar mission

NEW DELHI: Days after attempting to successfully land Chandrayaan-3-India's third lunar mission on the moon's surface on August 23, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will gear up for another big-ticket launch, its maiden solar mission Aditya-L1, in the end of August or early September, senior officials aware of the matter said

- Soumya Pillai

The space agency on Monday confirmed that the Aditya-L1 satellite has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota for the launch.

"PSLV-C57/Aditya-L1 Mission: Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is getting ready for the launch. The satellite realised at the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), Bengaluru has arrived at SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota," Isro said in a statement on Monday.

Aditya-L1 is India's first dedicated scientific mission to study the Sun. Earlier, this mission was conceived as Aditya-1 with a 400kg-class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), and was planned to be launched in an 800km-low Earth orbit.