This blog post was recovered from the Way Back Machine and may have existed on many avatars of the previous blogs that I owned. Some links are broken.
Immediately after the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I, then ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair announced Aditya-1, a spacecraft to study our Sun. Updates coming over the last one month have updates on this ISRO mission as well as interest in Solar Physics.
Aditya-1 is a 100 kg spacecraft under development by ISRO in association with Udaipur Solar Observatory, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy Centre and National Centre for Radio Astrophysics. This Rs. 50 crores space based solar observatory will be in a 600 km low Earth orbit and is expected to fly in 2012 close to Solar Maxima.The spacecraft will
Reports indicate that the Indian Institute of Astrophysics has completed the design of the solar coronagraph. ISRO is working on developing the detectors and thermal structure. First spacecraft prototype is expected in 2011. While the main idea is to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs), ISRO hopes to utilise the data to know how to better protect its satellite systems in orbit.
The IIA is also involved in the development of a ground based solar observatory in the Himalayas with national and international mission. The fabrication of the telescope is expected to begin in 2010 with IIAp has already floated the tender.
Parallel Spirals 