India to launch first solar mission in 2020

New Delhi: India is to launch Aditya-L1, its first mission to study the sun, in 2020, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) 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.