Ten days after successfully landing an unmanned vehicle near the South Pole of the Moon, India took off on Saturday, September 2, the last mission of its ambitious space program.
The probe, dubbed “Aditya-L1” (“Sun” in Hindi), is carrying scientific instruments intended to observe the outer layers of the Sun and begins a four-month journey to its destination, located 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth.
The probe will study coronal mass ejections, periodic phenomena that result in discharges of plasma and magnetic energy from the Sun’s atmosphere. They are so powerful that they can reach Earth and potentially disrupt the functioning of satellites.
In recent years, India has chained space prowess: in 2014, it was the first Asian nation to have placed a spacecraft in orbit around Mars, and in August 2023, the first country in the world to land on the pole. South of the Moon.
India now plans to launch a three-day manned mission around the Earth by next year. In addition, a joint mission with Japan must send a probe to the Moon by 2025 as well as a mission to Venus within two years.
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