Aditya-L1 to shed more light on present, future of Sun

Kolkata: Scientists expect to get new information about the past, present and future of the Sun after analysing the data that will be collected by India's first solar mission Aditya-L1, scheduled to be launched by ISRO on September 2. This data is believed to be important to understand possible climatic changes on Earth in the decades and centuries ahead.

Aditya-L1 will go up to the First Lagrangian point, about 1.5 million km from the Earth, and transmit the data much of which will come to the scientific community for the first time from a platform in space, said solar physicist Prof Dipankar Banerjee, who is part of a team which conceptualised the mission more than 10 years ago. If the Sun can be monitored over a long period from the Lagrangian point, it is expected to model the history of the Sun that is hitherto unknown to mankind, said the scientist who is the Director of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital, an autonomous body under the Union government.