#Wholesome2023: The Year That Saw ISRO Reaching For The Sun And The Moon, And Achieving It
2023 can undoubtedly be described as the year of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). In 2023, the Indian space agency achieved some major milestones and also set the platform for 2024.
Arguably, the biggest achievement the ISRO had in 2023 was the successful Chandrayaan 3 mission that landed on the Moon's south pole, the first for any space agency worldwide.
Chandrayaan 3 mission
The Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar explorer mission, was launched on the backdrop of the heartbreak of the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, which lost contact and crashed while attempting to land.
The Chandrayaan-3 was launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on 14 July 2023, aiming to land on the Moon's south pole.
Chandrayaan-3, comprising three main components: a propulsion module, Vikram lander, and the Pragyan rover, entered lunar orbit on August 5.
Chandrayaan 3 creates history
And on August 23, the nation of 1.4 billion held its breath as the Vikram lander touched down near the Lunar South pole.
This made India the fourth country in the world to successfully land on the Moon and the first to do so near the lunar south pole.
Chandrayaan 3 leaving a mark
On its first outing, the Vikram lander left the national emblem and ISRO logo etched on the Moon's regolith, cementing that legacy forever.
With the successful landing, the ISRO also achieved its three stated objectives of Chandrayaan-3:?
- To demonstrate a safe and soft landing on the surface of the Moon.?
- To demonstrate rover operations on the Moon.?
- To conduct in-situ scientific experiments on the lunar surface.
Not just the Moon, Sun too
But, ISRO was far from done with the success of the Chandrayaan-3. Close on the heels of the Chandrayaan-3's success, ISRO set its eyes on the Sun.
On September 2, the ISRO launched the Aditya-L1 Solar Mission?from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR) launch pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
The Aditya-L1 was placed in a halo orbit around Lagrangian Point 1 (or L1), which is 1.5 million km away from the Earth in the direction of the Sun.?
In November, the ISRO announced that the Aditya L1 has captured its first high-energy X-ray glimpse of solar flares.
During its first observation period from approximately October 29, the High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) on board Aditya-L1 spacecraft recorded the impulsive phase of solar flares.
HEL1OS, the hard X-ray spectrometer on Aditya-L1 Solar Mission by ISRO, is the harbinger of flaring activities on the Sun, with the ability to capture the early impulsive phase of the solar activity.
HEL1OS data enables researchers to study explosive energy release and electron acceleration during impulsive phases of solar flares.
HEL1OS was developed by the Space Astronomy Group of the U R Rao Satellite Centre, ISRO, Bengaluru.
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