Aditya L-1 Mission: A big shot post Chandrayaan-3

In just nine days, the Indian Space Programme seems to have climbed multiple ladders of success. The Chandrayaan-3’s success on 23 August 2023 filled the hearts of common Indians with sheer joy and happiness. The outpouring of public emotion across India after seeing the Vikram lander making its soft-landing successfully would become a part of India’s space folklore. To commemorate that, the Government of India has rightly decided to mark that day as National Space Day. The success of Chandrayaan-3 has generated not only interest but enthusiasm among the masses. It is not a small feat to make a society talk about outer space in its day-to-day conversations. Chandrayaan-3 has made it happen. Now, the attention has shifted from the moon to the sun. India’s solar mission which is known as Aditya L-1 Mission took off from Sriharikota at around 11.50 am on 2 September, 2023. From the lunar mission to the solar mission, the ISRO is ticking all the boxes that need to be ticked for India to become a mighty space-powered nation. The sheer attempt to study the Sun is a serious attempt by the ISRO to understand the solar winds and the solar surface. Sun is the central point of our solar system and therefore even from an evolutionary standpoint (evolution of solar system), this mission might go a long way in assessing the historical origins of the solar system. Mankind’s attempt at assessing the future only gets success when the histories are understood and sorted out. This philosophy also applies to space research. Future space missions would have better success rates if the scientific community, especially space engineers, astrophysicists, geologists and cosmologists get solid data by studying the sun. It’s at this point exactly that missions like Aditya L-1 would be tested. The Indian Space Research Organisation has crisply put the core idea of this entire mission in these few words on its official website, “Aditya L1 shall be the first space-based Indian mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth. A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time.” The entire ISRO is in high spirits currently and this mission’s success would add another feather to India’s cap. However, the outer space is a part of the global commons. Any scientific data that is received from these missions should ideally be shared among the international scientific community. The reason is, that outer space almost forces humanity to cooperate to succeed. Going solitary or being a lone wolf in outer space has a high chance of failure. Although, the counter argument can be that any space mission, despite international cooperation, can fail. This is true, but no sane-minded space agency would knowingly take the path that has a high risk of failure. A nation like India, whose space missions have always worked on shoestring budgets, can’t afford to take the risk of solitariness. The ideal of nationalism doesn’t necessarily need to negate the cry for cooperation. This becomes even truer when India’s longstanding motto has been ‘Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam’, which means the entire world is a large family. Secrecy becomes paramount when space is looked at from a militaristic standpoint. Gladly, humanity has not reached the potential or possesses any capability or ambition to militarize the sun. These simulation exercises are best left to the writers of science fiction. The rise of interest among the masses in space missions is a key marker of the rise of scientific temper, especially for youngsters. In a way, these space missions are protecting India’s constitutional values of developing scientific temper as a part of the Directive principles of the state policy. To conclude, the interest in space-related activities is a positive sign for the nation and it could very well boost the enthusiasm of ISRO and its scientists too. The writer is a Doctoral Fellow at School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.