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Science & Technology Current Affairs November 5th week 2017
Category : Science and Technology
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1. China Successfully Launches Remote Sensing Satellites.

China on Saturday successfully launched remote sensing satellites designed to conduct electromagnetic probes and other experiments, state media reported. The satellites, whose number is not specified yet, were launched on a Long March-2C rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan province at 2:10 AM (local time), Xinhua news agency reported.

The satellites have entered the preset orbit and today’s launching mission was proclaimed a success, the report said. They will conduct electromagnetic probes and other experiments, the report said. China, earlier this week, had launched three remote sensing satellites designed to improve observation capability to promote commercial use for the remote sensing industry.

The satellites were carried by a Long March-6 rocket, a new generation of liquid-fuelled carrier rocket developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

2. Aditya L1 Mission ISRO first sun mission to take off in 2019.

The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in a 800 km low earth orbit.  A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.  Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth.  The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives.

The project is approved and the satellite will be launched during 2019 – 2020 timeframe by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota.

Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona.  The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona.  It has a temperature of more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6000K. How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics. 

 Aditya-L1 with additional experiments can now provide observations of Sun`s Photosphere (soft and hard X-ray), Chromosphere (UV) and corona (Visible and NIR).  In addition, particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun and reaching the L1 orbit, and the magnetometer payload will measure the variation in magnetic field strength at the halo orbit around L1.   These payloads have to be placed outside the interference from the Earth’s magnetic field and could not have been useful in the low earth orbit.