India to launch first solar mission in 2020

New Delhi, June 13 (IANS) India is to launch Aditya-L1, its first mission to study the sun, in 2020, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman K. Sivan said on Thursday.
“The aim of the mission is to keep a permanent eye on the sun without any disturbance. Aditya-L1 is meant to observe the solar corona,” Sivan told media in a press briefing.
He said there are still a lot of things that are to be learnt about the sun.
Aditya-L1 mission is expected to be inserted in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) – which is 1.5 million km from the earth – so that there is a major advantage of continuously viewing the sun without any occultation/eclipses, Sivan added.
–IANS
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