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India to launch solar research space station in early September

The space station’s main mission is to survey the Sun’s corona, chromosphere and solar radiation in various spectra

NEW DELHI, August 23. /TASS/. India plans to launch its first solar research space station, the Aditya-L1, in the first week of September, head of the Indian Space Research Organization Sreedhara Somanath said.

"ISRO is planning many missions in the near future. Our immediate mission is Aditya L-1 which is a mission to study the corona of the sun," Somanath said at a press conference after the successful lunar landing of the Chandrayaan-3 module. He noted that the Aditya-L1 station will be equipped with a carrier rocket "today or tomorrow and we are planning the launch in the first week of September."

According to the ISRO, the Aditya-L1 will be brought into halo orbit near the L1 Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system about 1.5 million km away from the Earth. At this point, the station will be static relative to the Earth and the Sun, providing for an obstructed observation of the star. The space station’s main mission is to survey the Sun’s corona, chromosphere and solar radiation in various spectra.

The Aditya-L1 project will become India’s second high-tech remote space exploration mission after the country’s Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013. Should the launch take place before the end of August, it would be the second major space mission undertaken by the ISRO this summer: earlier in July, India launched the Chandrayaan-3 autonomous station to the Moon, with its module successfully landing on the lunar surface on August 23.

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