Chennai: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said that its maiden solar exploratory mission—Aditya-L1—is not a complete mission to study the Sun and its atmosphere 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 clarified days ahead of its the much talked-about solar mission.
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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.
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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.
ISRO’s first solar mission to take off on Sept 2
This is the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun from ISRO, which will be scheduled for launch on September 2, 2023, at 11:50 IST from Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. Interested users can register themself on ISRO’s official website to witness the PSLV-C57 rocket launch from the Launch View Gallery at Sriharikota.
