ISRO Successfully Launches Aditya-L1 Solar Mission

India and its space agency ISRO are flexing their muscles by launching the Aditya-L1 space probe, which will reach the sun in about 5 years. This comes within weeks after the successful launch of the lunar mission Chandrayaan 3. The Aditya L1 is the first rocket mission dedicated to observing the sun.

This means Aditya-L1 will travel 14,96,889 km over four months until it reaches the L1 Lagrange Point between the sun and Earth. A Lagrange Point is a place where two massive orbiting bodies are equidistant. This is where Aditya L1 will largely remain to reduce its fuel consumption. The spacecraft will stay in orbit and collect data that scientists hope will help them understand why the corona of the sun is hotter than its surface.

The mission also hopes to uncover information on how solar radiation and various other phenomena affect communication systems, satellites and power grids. By understanding these effects, space companies and agencies can protect satellites in orbit.

Scientists also want to predict coronal mass ejections. This will enable them to alert operators to shut down satellite power before a phenomenon occurs.

Aditya L1 will also try to discover the behaviour of solar winds and how the sun's activity can influence Earth's climate in the long run.

"We have made sure we will have a unique data set that is not currently available from any other mission. This will allow us to understand the sun, its dynamics as well as the inner heliosphere, which is an important element for current-day technology, as well as space weather aspects," said Sankar Subramanian, the principal scientist of the mission.

India and its agency ISRO, whose stature is rising daily, have many more missions lined up. It is working with Japan to send an uncured lander and rover to the lunar South Pole again in 2025. Before that, by next year, it plans to launch orbiters to observe Mars and Venus.