Hot on the heels of its historic Chandrayaan-3 moon landing, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched its latest mission, Aditya-L1, to study the sun and increase our understanding of how stars function.
As with the Chandrayaan-3 mission, Rakon is proud to have collaborated with ISRO on products for the Aditya-L1 mission that will play a key role in tracking the spacecraft throughout its journey as well as providing precise references for the scientific instruments that will study and improve our understanding of Earth’s closest star.
The mission plan is for the spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit around the “Lagrangian point (L1)” of the Sun-Earth system, about 1.5 million km from Earth (four times further than the moon), where it will have a continuous view of the Sun.
Aditya-L1 is carrying seven science payloads to observe the outermost layers of the sun using electromagnetic and particle detectors. The highly-stable Rakon products onboard the spacecraft are specifically designed to perform within the extreme conditions, including extreme heat and radiation, Aditya-L1 will be operating in.
The Sun constantly influences the Earth with radiation, heat and a constant flow of particles and magnetic fields. Among the mission objectives, ISRO hopes to learn more about the Sun’s dynamic and eruptive phenomena, that when directed towards the earth can cause technological disturbances in the near earth space environment.
Thanks to our presence in India we've had the privilege of partnering with ISRO for the last 15 years, allowing Rakon to develop groundbreaking products for critical Indian space programmes including the Chandrayaan moon missions and the Mars orbiter mission Mangalyaan, as well as the upcoming Gaganyaan programme (Indian Human Spaceflight Programme).
Rakon has a proud 40-year legacy of working with leading space agencies such as ISRO, NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) to deliver cutting-edge products for over 50 international space programmes, including NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, ESA’s mission to study Jupiter’s moons, and ISRO’s mission to explore the Moon’s South Pole.
We’ve also established ourselves in the fast growing NewSpace and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite ecosystem – with our latest NewSpace GNSS receiver product being used in an earth observation satellite.
A list of international space programmes Rakon has supported can be found on Rakon’s ‘Space Solutions’ webpage.
[Image credit: ISRO]