Aditya will shape the next phase of our space forays

The mission to the Sun will enrich our understanding of the solar corona and space weather, and make forecasts better. The data collected by its state-of-theart instruments will be a shot in the arm for Indian researchers

- Annapurni Subramaniam

In the last 10 days, the landscape of global space exploration has undergone a dramatic transformation. India pole-vaulted to the front row of space exploration, with the successful soft-landing on the southern polar region of the Moon. The precision and the frugal economics with which the mission was executed attracted the attention of not only the nation but also the world. Before we could take a breath and absorb this stupendous feat, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) announced the launch of its next ambitious mission — the Aditya-L1. This is the first dedicated mission to study the Sun. For the first time, the Indian space mission is flying to the Sun-Earth L1 lagrange point (the point of equilibrium where a small-body object can stay put under the opposing gravitational pulls of two large-body objects), which is about 1.5 million km away.