• The Indian Space Researcher Organisation’s (ISRO) Aditya L1 solar probe mission has captured its first high-energy solar flare in X-ray.

The GOES satellite is the “Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite,” which is operated by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It supports weather forecasting, severe storm tracking and meteorology research.

• The High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) on board Aditya-L1 has recorded the impulsive phase of solar flares.
• The recorded data is consistent with the X-ray light curves provided by NOAA’s GOES.
• The High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer is the hard X-ray spectrometer on the mission.
  • It operates in the wide X-ray energy band between 10 and 150 keV.
  • It helps study solar flare activities on the Sun.
• Other payloads on board the Aditya L1 include–
  • Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX), Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA), SoLEXS-Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) and

ABOUT SOLAR FLARES

• A solar flare is an intense burst of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots.
• They tend to originate from regions of solar surface that contain sunspots — darker, cooler portions of solar surface where magnetic fields are particularly strong.
• Flares are our solar system’s largest explosive events.
• They are seen as bright areas on the sun, and they can last from minutes to hours.
• Studying solar flares and other space weather phenomena is important because they can affect life here on Earth.
  • They can affect power systems, satellite communication systems and radio communications.
  • During worst-case scenarios, they can cause blackouts that affect large parts of the Earth for hours.