The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to launch 'Aditya-L1', the first Indian mission to study the sun, by the year 2020.

ISRO Director Mylswamy Annadurai, while recently revealing the space agency's plans, also said that the space organisation is planning to launch four more important satellites in the next three months and is working to launch 70 satellites in the next three years.

More about the Aditya-L1 mission

The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in 800 km low earth orbit

A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses

Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to "Aditya-L1 mission" and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth. The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives

With additional experiments Aditya-L1 can now provide observations of Sun's photosphere (soft and hard X-ray), chromosphere (UV), and corona (Visible and NIR)

The project has been approved and the satellite will be launched in the 2019 - 2020 timeframe by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota

What is the solar corona?

The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona. Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona. It has a temperature of more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6000K.

Solar physicists haven't yet been able to know how the corona gets heated to such high temperatures.

Main aim of the solar mission

List of payloads and their objective

Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC): To study the diagnostic parameters of solar corona and dynamics and origin of Coronal Mass Ejections (3 visible and 1 Infra-Red channels); to conduct the magnetic field measurement of solar corona down to tens of Gauss

Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT): To image the spatially resolved solar photosphere and chromosphere in near ultraviolet (200-400 nm) and measure solar irradiance variations

Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX): To study the variation of solar wind properties as well as its distribution and spectral characteristics

Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA): To understand the composition of solar wind and its energy distribution

Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS): To monitor the X-ray flares for studying the heating mechanism of the solar corona

High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS): To observe the dynamic events in the solar corona and provide an estimate of the energy used to accelerate the particles during the eruptive events.

Magnetometer: To measure the magnitude and nature of the interplanetary magnetic field.

The main aim of the solar mission is to do coronal and near UV studies of the sun and help resolve some unanswered questions in solar physics.

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