Today's Headlines - 16 August 2023
Isro’s space probe to study the Sun
GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) released images of the Aditya-L1 mission — the space agency’s first attempt to study the Sun. The satellite has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, for its integration with the launch vehicle, PSLV.
What is the Aditya-L1 mission?
The Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
It’s equipped with seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.
Why is studying the Sun important?
Every planet, including Earth and the exoplanets beyond the Solar System, evolves — and this evolution is governed by its parent star.
The solar weather and environment affect the weather of the entire system. Variations in this weather can change the orbits of satellites or shorten their lives, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power blackouts and other disturbances on Earth. Knowledge of solar events is key to understanding space weather.
To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system. Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. The L1 point is home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO), an international collaboration project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun. Aditya L1 will perform continuous observations looking directly at the Sun.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, has already gone far closer — but it will be looking away from the Sun.
The earlier Helios 2 solar probe, a joint venture between NASA and the space agency of erstwhile West Germany, went within 43 million km of the Sun’s surface in 1976.
#upsc #news #headline #ISRO #study #sun #space #technology #india #space #research #technology #aditya #mission #SDSC #satishdhawanspacecenter #srihorikota #andhrapradesh #PSLV #distance #magnetic #corona #solar #planet #weather #earth #repulsion #gravitational #forces #fuel #SOHO #NASA #germany #surface
Isro’s space probe to study the Sun
GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) released images of the Aditya-L1 mission — the space agency’s first attempt to study the Sun. The satellite has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, for its integration with the launch vehicle, PSLV.
What is the Aditya-L1 mission?
The Aditya-L1 will observe the Sun from a close distance, and try to obtain information about its atmosphere and magnetic field.
It’s equipped with seven payloads (instruments) on board to study the Sun’s corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and will carry out round-the-clock imaging of the Sun.
Why is studying the Sun important?
Every planet, including Earth and the exoplanets beyond the Solar System, evolves — and this evolution is governed by its parent star.
The solar weather and environment affect the weather of the entire system. Variations in this weather can change the orbits of satellites or shorten their lives, interfere with or damage onboard electronics, and cause power blackouts and other disturbances on Earth. Knowledge of solar events is key to understanding space weather.
To learn about and track Earth-directed storms, and to predict their impact, continuous solar observations are needed.
Every storm that emerges from the Sun and heads towards Earth passes through L1, and a satellite placed in the halo orbit around L1 of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
L1 refers to Lagrangian/Lagrange Point 1, one of five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system. Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange, are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.
These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. The L1 point is home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO), an international collaboration project of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The L1 point is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about one-hundredth of the way to the Sun. Aditya L1 will perform continuous observations looking directly at the Sun.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018, has already gone far closer — but it will be looking away from the Sun.
The earlier Helios 2 solar probe, a joint venture between NASA and the space agency of erstwhile West Germany, went within 43 million km of the Sun’s surface in 1976.
#upsc #news #headline #ISRO #study #sun #space #technology #india #space #research #technology #aditya #mission #SDSC #satishdhawanspacecenter #srihorikota #andhrapradesh #PSLV #distance #magnetic #corona #solar #planet #weather #earth #repulsion #gravitational #forces #fuel #SOHO #NASA #germany #surface
Today's Headlines - 05 September 2023
A sunrace of significant global missions
GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)
In the wake of the Indian Space Research Organisation's successful launch of its inaugural solar mission, Aditya-L1,, let's embark on a journey through key missions from space agencies worldwide, all dedicated to unravelling the enigmatic secrets of the Sun.
A Sunrace
USA
US: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US space agency, launched the Parker Solar Probe in August 2018. In December 2021, Parker flew through the Sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. This was the first time ever that a spacecraft touched the Sun, according to NASA.
In February 2020, NASA joined hands with the European Space Agency (ESA) and launched The Solar Orbiter to collect data to find out how the Sun created and controlled the constantly changing space environment throughout the solar system.
Other active solar missions by NASA are Advanced Composition Explorer launched in August, 1997; Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory in October, 2006; Solar Dynamics Observatory in February, 2010; and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph launched in June, 2013.
Also, in December, 1995, NASA, ESA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) jointly launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Japan
JAXA, Japan's space agency, launched its first solar observation satellite, Hinotori (ASTRO-A), in 1981. The objective was to study solar flares using hard X-rays, according to JAXA. JAXA's other solar exploratory missions are Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) launched in 1991; SOHO (along with NASA and ESA) in 1995; and Transient Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), along with NASA, in 1998.
In 2006, Hinode (SOLAR-B) was launched, which was the successor to Yohkoh (SOLAR-A), the orbiting solar observatory. Japan launched it in collaboration with the US and the UK. The objective of Hinode, an observatory satellite, is to study the impact of the Sun on the Earth.
Yohkoh's objective was to observe solar flares and the solar corona. It was the first satellite to track almost an entire 11-year solar activity cycle.
Europe
In October, 1990, the ESA launched Ulysses to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the Sun, giving scientists information about the variable effect the Sun has on the space surrounding it. Other than solar missions launched in collaboration with NASA and the JAXA, the ESA launched Proba-2 in October, 2001.
Proba-2 is the second of the Proba series, building on nearly eight years of successful Proba-1 experience, even as Proba-1 was not a solar exploratory mission. On-board Proba-2 were four experiments, two of them were solar observation experiments.
Proba stands for Project for On-Board Autonomy. Upcoming solar missions of the ESA include Proba-3, scheduled for 2024 and Smile, scheduled for 2025.
China
The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) was successfully launched by the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in October, 2022. The ASO-S mission is designed to reveal connections among the solar magnetic field, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
Solar flares and CMEs are eruptive solar phenomena, thought to be driven by changes in the Sun's magnetic field.
#upsc #news #headline #sunrace #significant #global #missions #spacetechnology #indian #space #organisation #AdityaL1 #NASA #Solar #magnetic #fields #spacecraft #firsttime #orbiter #ESA #enviroments #spectrograph #JAXA #SOHO #japan #USA #EUROPE #CHINA #ASO #CMEs #autonomy #mission
A sunrace of significant global missions
GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)
In the wake of the Indian Space Research Organisation's successful launch of its inaugural solar mission, Aditya-L1,, let's embark on a journey through key missions from space agencies worldwide, all dedicated to unravelling the enigmatic secrets of the Sun.
A Sunrace
USA
US: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US space agency, launched the Parker Solar Probe in August 2018. In December 2021, Parker flew through the Sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. This was the first time ever that a spacecraft touched the Sun, according to NASA.
In February 2020, NASA joined hands with the European Space Agency (ESA) and launched The Solar Orbiter to collect data to find out how the Sun created and controlled the constantly changing space environment throughout the solar system.
Other active solar missions by NASA are Advanced Composition Explorer launched in August, 1997; Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory in October, 2006; Solar Dynamics Observatory in February, 2010; and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph launched in June, 2013.
Also, in December, 1995, NASA, ESA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) jointly launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Japan
JAXA, Japan's space agency, launched its first solar observation satellite, Hinotori (ASTRO-A), in 1981. The objective was to study solar flares using hard X-rays, according to JAXA. JAXA's other solar exploratory missions are Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) launched in 1991; SOHO (along with NASA and ESA) in 1995; and Transient Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), along with NASA, in 1998.
In 2006, Hinode (SOLAR-B) was launched, which was the successor to Yohkoh (SOLAR-A), the orbiting solar observatory. Japan launched it in collaboration with the US and the UK. The objective of Hinode, an observatory satellite, is to study the impact of the Sun on the Earth.
Yohkoh's objective was to observe solar flares and the solar corona. It was the first satellite to track almost an entire 11-year solar activity cycle.
Europe
In October, 1990, the ESA launched Ulysses to study the environment of space above and below the poles of the Sun, giving scientists information about the variable effect the Sun has on the space surrounding it. Other than solar missions launched in collaboration with NASA and the JAXA, the ESA launched Proba-2 in October, 2001.
Proba-2 is the second of the Proba series, building on nearly eight years of successful Proba-1 experience, even as Proba-1 was not a solar exploratory mission. On-board Proba-2 were four experiments, two of them were solar observation experiments.
Proba stands for Project for On-Board Autonomy. Upcoming solar missions of the ESA include Proba-3, scheduled for 2024 and Smile, scheduled for 2025.
China
The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) was successfully launched by the National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in October, 2022. The ASO-S mission is designed to reveal connections among the solar magnetic field, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
Solar flares and CMEs are eruptive solar phenomena, thought to be driven by changes in the Sun's magnetic field.
#upsc #news #headline #sunrace #significant #global #missions #spacetechnology #indian #space #organisation #AdityaL1 #NASA #Solar #magnetic #fields #spacecraft #firsttime #orbiter #ESA #enviroments #spectrograph #JAXA #SOHO #japan #USA #EUROPE #CHINA #ASO #CMEs #autonomy #mission