Chennai: Having succeeded in the third Lunar mission, that ensured soft landing on Moon's south polar region, a feat achieved only by India, the entire ISRO community is on the "the moon", 'cloud nine' as Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself said, as he travelled all the way straightway overcoming journey vagaries came to Bengaluru from South Africa and Greece.
It was a momentous occasion after he personally said that he could not be present there when India soft landed on the Moon.
But after a video address from Johannesburg, Mr Modi kept his date with the ISRO scientists and landed in Bengaluru addressed them to rejuvenate them, for further success.
And buoyed by his address and his encouragement, ISRO is now all set for yet another inter-planetary mission--aiming the Sun, which is to be followed by other planets like the first human spaceflight Gaganyaan, a point refereed Mr Modi himself and also Venus.
After 42 challenging days for Moon mission, it will be even more tricky and further challenging as the Sun's spacecraft will have to take a 120 day sojourn to land on the Solar region--about four times of the distance from Earth to the Moon.
While the Moon's distance from earth is 3.84 lah km, the journey for LI Aditya is 1.5 million km.
Despite basking on the success and glory of Ch-3 mission that made the India only country to land on south pole region, ISRO scientists are working overtime to make its next inter-exploratory mission to go from the very cold Lunar to the very hot Sun and make it a success further catapulting it in the world arena.
If the sources are to be believed the Mission will take place in a week's time that will further propel India to be the space major in the world, perhaps a feat not achieved by any one after south pole in the moon.
ISRO sources said we will go beyond mars, moon, sun and further thereafter including Venus, that will definitely establish the confidence of the ISRO scientists --all indigenous missions, that will place India among the leading space faring nations in the world which will start looking up to India that has injected multiple satellites in various orbits over the years that included launching of more than 100 satellites in a single mission and demonstrating to switch off the vehicle engine, restart again and bring down them to lower orbits.
Understanding coronal heating and solar wind acceleration major objectives of Sun mission
As it gears up for its first Solar Interplanetry mission to study the sun, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said the major science objectives of the Adity-L1 spacecraft, to be ferried into a Low Earth Orbit by PSLV vehicle, was to understand the Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Acceleration.
ISRO said other objectives include, understanding initiation of Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), flares and near-earth space weather.
It also also to understand coupling and dynamics of the solar atmosphere and understand solar wind distribution and temperature anisotropy.
On the uniqueness of the Sun mission, it said it will study First time spatially
resolved solar disk in the near UV band, CME dynamics close to the solar disk thereby providing information, in the acceleration regime of CME which is not observed consistently.
On-board intelligence to detect CMEs and solar flares for optimised observations and data volume, Directional and energy anisotropy of solar wind using multi-direction observations, are also the unique features of the mission.
Is Aditya-L1 a complete Mission to study the Sun : No says ISRO
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said its maiden Solar exploratory Mission Aditya-L1 is not a complete one to study the Sun due to limited mass, power and volume of the spacecraft that carries scientific payloads in space.
"Is Aditya-L1 a complete Mission to study the Sun. The obvious answer is a ‘NO’ which is not only true for Aditya-L1 but in general for any space mission", ISRO said.
The reason is that due to the limited mass, power and volume of the spacecraft that carries the scientific payloads in space, only a limited set of instruments with limited capacity can be sent onboard the spacecraft, the Space Agency said.
In case of Aditya-L1, all the measurements will be made from the Lagrange point L1. As an example, the various phenomena of the sun are multi-directional and therefore the directional distribution of energy of explosive/eruptive phenomena will not be possible to study with Aditya-L1 alone, it added.
Another Lagrange point known as L5 is a good vantage point for studying the Earth directed CME events and assessing the space weather.
Also, the polar regions of the sun are not well studied due to technological challenges of achieving spacecraft orbits for such studies.
The sun polar dynamics and magnetic fields are believed to play important role in deriving the solar cycles. Further, the polarisation measurements of solar radiations at different wavelengths are required to understand the various processes occurring in and around the sun, ISRO said.
Why Sun study : It is the dynamic nearest star and can know about stars in other galaxies : ISRO
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) which is gearing up for its first Solar exploratory mission to study the dynamic sun with the planned Aditya-L1 satellite using PLSV in the coming days, said the study of the sun was to know about stars in various other galaxies.
ISRO said The sun is the nearest star and therefore can be studied in much more detail as compared to other stars.
"By studying the sun we can learn much more about stars in our Milky Way as well as about stars in various other galaxies", it said.
"The sun is a very dynamic star that extends much beyond what we see. It shows several eruptive phenomena and releases immense amount of energy in the solar system. If such explosive solar phenomena is directed towards the earth, it could cause various types of disturbances in the near earth space environment", it said.
It said various spacecraft and communication systems are prone to such disturbances and therefore an early warning of such events is important for taking corrective measures beforehand. In addition to these, if an astronaut is directly exposed to such explosive phenomena, he/she would be in danger. The various thermal and magnetic phenomena on the sun are of extreme nature.
Thus, the sun also provides a good natural laboratory to understand those phenomena which could not be directly studied in the lab.
