After the Chandrayaan triumph, ISRO is now eyeing the Sun, Venus and a manned spaceflight. Meanwhile, India’s fledgling private space industry is raring for a piece of the pie
After the moon, ISRO scientists have now set their sights on the sun
New Delhi,ISSUE DATE: Sep 11, 2023 | UPDATED: Sep 1, 2023 20:17 IST
Having conquered the moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now trying to find its place under the sun. Even as the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover were busy carrying out their scientific tasks on the lunar surface, other ISRO scientists and engineers were focusing on preparing the Aditya L1 spacecraft for its long journey to study the Sun. India’s first mission to explore our nearest star works on the same principles as the Chandrayaan mission, where ISRO deployed innovative methods and ensured frugality in financial resources. America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have already carried out over 20 scientific space missions to the Sun, but ISRO, as it did with Chandrayaan, wants to come up with its own unique discoveries. Especially on the composition of the Sun’s corona, photosphere and chromosphere. The space organisation hopes to do so by using the scientific instruments aboard Aditya to measure the solar electromagnetic fields and particle ejections that could shed new light on its behaviour.