Aditya-L1 Support Cell (AL1SC)
GS PAPER III: Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.
Context: A community service centre has been set up to bring all data on board India’s first dedicated solar space mission to a single web-based interface enabling the users to quickly look at the data and identify the interesting science cases.
- The service centre called Aditya-L1 Support Cell (AL1SC), a joint effort of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) an autonomous institute of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India.
- It will be used by the guest observers in analyzing science data and preparing science observing proposals.
- The centre will act as conduit between the users (student and faculty members from research Institutes/ Universities/ Colleges etc.) and payload teams of Aditya-L1 and solar astronomy research community at large.
- It is slated to develop specific tools to assist guest observers/researchers to prepare observing proposals for Aditya-L1 observations and will assist ISRO with the design and development of the required analysis software for handling scientific data.
- The centre will also provide the co-aligned data from other observatories around the world that can complement the data obtained from Aditya-L1 allowing users to accomplish the science goals beyond the capabilities of the Aditya-L1.
- AL1SC will also build capacity by establishing periodic training of the national user community on data analysis and proposal preparation.
- The centre will expand reach of Aditya-L1 not only within India, but also increase the visibility of the mission at the international level.
- It will allow every interested individual to be able to perform scientific analysis of the data.
About ADITYA L1 mission:
- The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in a 800 km low earth orbit.
- A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.
- Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth.
- The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives.
- Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona.
- The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona.
- It has a temperature of more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6000K.
- How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics.
- Aditya-L1 with additional experiments can now provide observations of Sun's Corona (soft and hard X-ray, Emission lines in the visible and NIR), Chromosphere (UV) and photosphere (broadband filters).
- In addition, particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun and reaching the L1 orbit, and the magnetometer payload will measure the variation in magnetic field strength at the halo orbit around L1.
- These payloads have to be placed outside the interference from the Earth’s magnetic field and could not have been useful in the low earth orbit.
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