Bengaluru: Shifting focus to its next space odyssey after successfully placing a lander on the moon’s uncharted South Pole, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday said the country’s maiden solar mission ‘Aditya-L1’ will “possibly” be launched on September 2.
Aditya-L1 would be the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun.
Speaking to media barely minutes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to scientists at the ISRO’s Bengaluru headquarters, Nilesh M Desai, a top space scientist at the agency and the director of Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, said, “We had planned the ‘Aditya-L1’ mission to study the sun. The mission is ready for launch. There is a possibility that the spacecraft will be launched on September 2.” He said PM Modi’s address to the scientists at ISRO’s Bengaluru command centre was ‘motivating’.
Earlier, speaking to media, ISRO chairman S Somanth said the country’s maiden mission to study the sun will be ready for launch in the first week of September.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced that August 23 will be celebrated as ‘National Space Day’ to mark Chandrayaan-3‘s landing on the moon. He met the team of scientists involved in the country’s third lunar mission and was pictured embracing ISRO chief S Somanath
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