Science & Technology Quiz: Aditya-L1 and Space Science Missions

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma flew in April 1984 aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz T-11 as part of a joint programme between the Soviet Union and India, and spent about eight days aboard the Salyut 7 space station.

Gaganyaan is the programme under which the Indian Space Research Organisation is preparing to send Indian astronauts into a low orbit around the Earth in a crew module of its own and bring them back safely.

STUDSAT, short for Student Satellite, was the first pico satellite built in India. A pico satellite is one that weighs under about one kilogram, and STUDSAT weighed less than that.

ChaSTE was carried on the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3. It has a probe fitted with a set of temperature sensors, which was pushed into the lunar soil to a depth of about ten centimetres near the south polar region.

Sindhu Netra was developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and was placed in orbit in February 2021 by the PSLV-C51 flight, the same flight whose main payload was the Amazonia-1 satellite of Brazil.

Aditya-L1 was launched on 2 September 2023 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota by the PSLV-C57 flight, which used the most powerful version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

The Lagrange point L1 of the Sun and the Earth lies between the two bodies, roughly 1.5 million or fifteen lakh kilometres from the Earth.

The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph is the largest and the principal instrument aboard Aditya-L1. A coronagraph creates an artificial eclipse inside the instrument by covering the bright disc of the Sun, so that the faint outer atmosphere called the corona becomes visible.

The Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 touched down near the south polar region of the Moon on 23 August 2023, making India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and the first to do so near the lunar south pole.

The Mars Orbiter Mission was launched on 5 November 2013 by a PSLV and reached the orbit of Mars on 24 September 2014.

Aryabhata was the first satellite built by India and it was launched on 19 April 1975 from a Soviet launch site, since India had no launch vehicle of its own at the time.