About Liquid Apogee Motor:
- It is a small but powerful engine going by the acronym ‘LAM’ will have a critical role to play in the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) upcoming Aditya-L1 mission meant to study the sun.
- The successful operation of LAM is vital to ISRO’s plans to place the Aditya spacecraft in a halo orbit at Lagrangian point L1.
- Such engines are used for orbital adjustment manoeuvres of satellites/spacecraft in orbit.
- It is developed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), the ISRO Centre for Liquid and Cryogenic Propulsion in Thiruvananthapuram.
Key facts about the Aditya-L1 mission
- It is the first space-based Indian mission to study the Sun.
- It will be launched by the PSLV-XL launch vehicle.
- The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth.
- A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses.
- This will provide a greater advantage in observing solar activities and their effect on space weather in real-time.
- The spacecraft carries seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic particle and magnetic field detectors.
