Aditya

[Philalethes]

A few days ago ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) launched Aditya, which is a new satellite that will be placed at L1 alongside several other of our beloved satellites; its primary objective is study of various aspects of the Solar atmosphere, particularly the chromosphere and the corona, and as such it carries a brand new dedicated coronagraph with it, along with various other instruments to make measurements we're typically interested in: a Solar ultraviolet imager, a couple of X-ray spectrometers, a couple of Solar wind particle analyzers, and a triaxial magnetometer for magnetic field measurements.

This and lots of other information, including continuous updates on its journey from orbit around Earth to its planned halo orbit around L1, can be found on its dedicated website here.

I still don't know to what extent the data from it will be made publicly available (I sent them an email a good while ago asking about it, but never got any reply, maybe I'll try again soon), but I really hope the data will be public and easily accessible in the same manner that the data we usually look at here is (e.g. from SOHO, DSCOVR, ACE, and so on). For many of those measurements it would be great to have some fresh equipment to look at data from, at least as we await the launch of SWFO in a couple of years (not accounting for possible delays).

The total time from launch to L1 will be ~4 months, with a couple of weeks now in the beginning increasing orbital altitude around Earth, before starting the longer maneuver to L1. If everything goes well it should be there around the beginning of 2024, hopefully well in time to start providing us with data as we approach Solar maximum.

[tniickck]

https://www.isro.gov.in/Aditya_L1.html

[Philalethes]

53 minutes ago, tniickck said:

https://www.isro.gov.in/Aditya_L1.html

Maybe it wasn't so clear since I linked the text, but I already provided that link above here:

On 9/8/2023 at 12:05 AM, Philalethes said:

This and lots of other information, including continuous updates on its journey from orbit around Earth to its planned halo orbit around L1, can be found on its dedicated website here.

Was aiming on doing an update to this thread once the satellite is fully settled in its final orbit, which is still set to be a week or two into 2024 as far as I know.

Never received an answer from them regarding the availability of data though, but I'm still hoping the aim is to provide public access on a continuous basis like we have from e.g. DSCOVR.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Would be nice that data would be made publicly available. If that’s the case we can try to integrate it in SWL

[Philalethes]

Almost a week ago Aditya was successfully inserted into halo orbit around L1, as announced on their site.

Still no information about the data, but I assume that there will be a period of testing everything and that there'll be an announcement whenever it's fully operational.

[Philalethes]

Magnetometer boom has now been deployed. Still no announcement about data availability though, but understandable that they're taking their time in deploying instruments properly; not sure to what extent the other instruments have deployment processes like this, I guess we'll know more with further updates.

[arjemma]

Thanks for all the updates @Philalethes!

I really really hope that they will make the data public. If you don't get an answer, I will also send an email asking. I'm so excited that we have a brand new satellite up there that measures the solar wind and that has a coronagraph.