On September 2, India is scheduled to launch the Aditya-L1 solar mission. There have been many solar mission initiatives launched in the past.
The following are some significant missions launched by space agencies of various countries exploring the Sun as the Indian Space Research Organization prepares to launch Aditya-L1 on September 2:
US: The Parker Solar Probe was launched in August 2018 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US space agency. In December 2021, Parker recorded particles and magnets in the corona, the Sun’s upper atmosphere. According to the NASA website, this was the first time a spacecraft had ever touched the Sun.
To gather information about how the Sun produced and managed the constantly morphing space environment throughout the solar system, NASA collaborated with the European Space Agency (ESA) and launched The Solar Orbiter in February 2020.
Advanced Composition Explorer, launched in August 1997; Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, launched in October 2006; Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February 2010; and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, launched in June 2013, are some of NASA’s other ongoing solar projects.
In addition, NASA, ESA, and JAXA launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in December 1995.
Japan: In 1981, JAXA, the country of Japan’s space agency, launched Hinotori (ASTRO-A), the first solar observation satellite. According to the official JAXA website, the purpose was to analyze solar flares using hard X-rays.
Yohkoh (SOLAR-A), launched in 1991, SOHO (with NASA and ESA) in 1995, and Transient Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), launched in 1998, are JAXA’s other solar exploring projects.
Hinode (SOLAR-B), the orbiting solar observatory’s successor to Yohkoh (SOLAR-A), was launched in 2006. Japan launched it in partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom. Hinode, an observatory satellite, is designed to examine the Sun’s impact on the Earth.
Europe: In October 1990, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched Ulysses to research the environment of space above and below the Sun’s poles. Aside from solar missions launched in partnership with NASA and JAXA, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched Proba-2 in October 2001.
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Proba-2 is the second mission in the Proba series, following over eight years of successful Proba-1 operations, even though Proba-1 was not a solar exploring mission.
There were four experiments on board Proba-2, two of which were sun observation experiments.
Proba is an acronym that stands for Project for On-Board Autonomy. Proba-3, due in 2024, and Smile, scheduled for 2025, are two upcoming ESA solar missions.
China: On October 8, 2022, the National Space Science Centre of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) successfully launched the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S).
