Lord of the Web

Chandrayaan-1 has been a huge success and brought many accolades for the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO). Bolstered by this success, the ISRO has come up with a programme to send a probe to the sun, something that has been in the cans at ISRO for a long time now.

The mission to the sun - Aditya - will try to unravel some mysteries surrounding the sun, related to the solar flares and solar winds. The mission will also study the disturbance caused back home at earth by these solar phenomena.

Aditya is expected to be launched by 2012 at a cost of Rs.50 crores. This mission will be the first of its kind and will provide many answers about our star. Study of the corona has never been done from space before and hence the mission has lots of scientific value. The mission will also concentrate on finding the effects of these solar phenomena on spacecrafts and satellites so that ISRO can well protect the man made objects that it sends out to space.

The Sun’s corona is studied from earth during eclipses. The 100kg satellite carrying a soloar coronagraph will create an artificial “eclipse” to study the corona from space. The launch year of 2012 was chosen since it is the year the sun would reach its “solar maximum”, a 11-year cycle phenomenon. The launch will not be a dedicated one. Aditya will be launched along with other satellites launched at that time.