Key Takeaways
- ISRO confirmed that the Aditya-L1 mission is not a complete mission to study the Sun because of limited mass, power and payload capacity.
- All observations will be conducted from Lagrange point L1, restricting multi‑directional solar measurements.
- Future missions may need to target points like Lagrange point L5 or polar orbits to fully capture solar dynamics and space weather.
Chennai: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said its maiden Solar exploratory Mission Aditya-L1 is not a complete one to study the Sun. This limitation is 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.
