India Seeks To Top Its Moon Landing with Spacecraft To Study Sun

Hot on the heels of its lunar landing success, India is readying to blast a probe even deeper into space to study the sun. From a report: The country's first solar observation mission, named Aditya-L1, is set to be launched from India's main spaceport on Sriharikota, an island off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, at 11:50 a.m. local time on Saturday. The spacecraft is scheduled to spend 125 days traveling 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) to its destination, a point in space where objects stay put and consume less fuel.

While arriving there would be an impressive achievement for ISRO, the Indian space agency, Aditya-L1 would have gone just a fraction of the 150 million km between Earth and the sun. For ISRO, success would be another major feat after India became the first country to land a spacecraft close to the lunar south pole in August. India has more ambitious projects in the works. A human spaceflight program aims to launch astronauts into orbit for the first time possibly by 2025, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said in an interview with news agency Asian News International. ISRO and NASA plan to cooperate on sending astronauts to the International Space Station and India is in discussions with Japan to work together on a mission.

For the manned mission...

[Baron_Yam]

I recommend some excellent insulation in the boots - solar surface temperatures are around 5750K. Of course, the 'aero'-braking maneuver to kill the 600km/s velocity, using giant arcs of super-heated plasma as your braking medium... that's tricky.

In all seriousness, I wish them luck. May they be successful and do some good science in the process.

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Aditya-L1 isn't going to the sun. I mean, its destination is right in the name. You'll need to wait for Aditya-Sun for your joke to make any sense.

Son of Aditya sounds like a bad sci-fi movie in a foreign language with bad English voice-over dubbing.

Re:

[quenda]

I recommend some excellent insulation in the boots - solar surface temperatures are around 5750K.

They'll be complaining about the heat even more than the British in the Raj. Goodness gracious, it ain't half hot Maan!

Of course

[rossdee]

They are going at night

Re:

[sirfer_99]

According to Scott Manley, Pragyan(?) is only going to last a lunar day or at most a couple of weeks. What a waste due to the want of a decent power system.

Re:

[vasanth]

India pops out millions of engineers every year. Can't expect them all to be on toilet duty, right? It's like saying you shouldn't watch TV because you're eating. A country can multitask!

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[groobly]

Yet, 100% have access to the sun, making the sun a more widely important object to study.

Good to ser

[WindBourne]

Seriously, we need more nations to undertake basic science research . The west, esp America, has been doing the bulk of this for the last couple hundred years. China spends mostly on applied science so as to improve products , not create new classes of them . They also need to invest a great deal more in this.

Reusability

[backslashdot]

These are nice, but when it comes to space the biggest need is to build a rocket engine that can be reused hundreds of times with zero maintenance in between. Disposable rockets are insane. Even a billionaire won't throw away their car after each use, how the heck have we been justifying systems that are non-reusable or fake-reusable (shuttle, I am look at you)? It is fucking insane.

Re:

[alvinrod]

If you're a billionaire you could buy a new Tesla and give/throw it away every day. Your wealth generates enough interest for you to do this endlessly. Although it seems wasteful, it would actually be a decent way to get more electric cars into the market, particularly if you have them to the kind of people who couldn't normally afford one themselves. Maybe someday when Mr. Beast becomes a billionaire we'll set it happen. Oprah could probably do it right now. It's not a "new" car if she's already driven it

Not as photogenic (obviously), but a good step.

[Eunomion]

It's good to explore a broad range of objects, to find a particular nation's interests and talents. We found out we love Mars; the Soviets had an affinity for Venus. Will be interesting to see how China and India's affinities shape up when they're choosing third, fourth, and fifth missions, etc.

Avoiding the heat

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Coping with the heat might be a problem with a mission to the Sun, so they'll probably go at night when it's cooler.

dark side

[groobly]

India's lander will target the dark side of the sun, never seen from earth.