Chennai, Sep 1 (FN Agency) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said its maiden Solar exploratory Mission Aditya-L1 is not a complete one to study the Sun 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. ISRO said the sun is the nearest star and therefore can be studied in much more detail as compared to other stars. “By studying the sun we can learn much more about stars in our Milky Way as well as about stars in various other galaxies”, it said.
“The sun is a very dynamic star that extends much beyond what we see. It shows several eruptive phenomena and releases immense amount of energy in the solar system. If such explosive solar phenomena is directed towards the earth, it could cause various types of disturbances in the near earth space environment”, it said. It said various spacecraft and communication systems are prone to such disturbances and therefore an early warning of such events is important for taking corrective measures beforehand. In addition to these, if an astronaut is directly exposed to such explosive phenomena, he/she would be in danger. The various thermal and magnetic phenomena on the sun are of extreme nature. Thus, the sun also provides a good natural laboratory to understand those phenomena which could not be directly studied in the lab.