New Delhi: ISRO is soliciting proposals from Indian researchers for observation time on India’s first dedicated heliophysics observatory, Aditya-L1. The
spacecraft was launched on 2 September 2023 by the PSLV-C57 flight and reached its target halo orbit around the first Lagrangian point in the Sun-Earth system on 6 January 2024. This is a region of stable gravity 1.5 million km from the Earth towards the Sun, from where the spacecradt can continuously observe the Sun without eclipses or occultations. There is a sophisticated suite of seven instruments on board, that observe the solar disk and corona remotely, and conduct in-situ measurements of the energetic particles streaming out of the Sun in the form of solar wind.
The payloads on the Aditya L1 mission. (Image Credit: ISRO).
The remote sensing instruments peer into the different layers of the Sun, including the photosphere, the visible surface, the chromosphere or middle atmosphere and the corona or the outer atmosphere. Different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation is used to peer into those layers. The particle detectors and magnetometers measure the density, temperature and energy levels of the particles washing over the spacecraft. Now ISRO is offering time on the spacecraft for Indian scientists working in the area of solar science to formulate particular observation plans for their studies.
There is no proprietary period for data
The data collected by the instruments will be made available in the public domain, and will be accessible both nationally and internationally. This means that anyone other than the Principal Investigator and team who submitted the proposal will be able to study and work with the same data. The proposals have to be submitted using the Aditya-L1 Proposal Processing System (ALPPS) software developed for the purpose, with the deadline for proposals being 6 February. The first observation cycle is between April and June 2026. ISRO is extending the opportunity to get the maximum science returns from the mission.
