The Sun, our nearest star, is responsible for life on Earth. Apart from radiation, the stream of charged particles, the solar wind, continuously escapes from the Sun and interacts with the Earth’s magnetosphere leading to the formation of Auroras. Furthermore, large-scale magnetic eruptions such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) originate in the solar atmosphere and disrupt the magnetosphere when directed towards Earth. The physics of the solar wind and CMEs through the heliosphere is not yet fully understood. Hence they are a hot topic of research. One of the primary science goals of ADITYA-L1 is to observe the CMEs and probe the solar wind's origins in the multi-wavelength. With both remote-sensing and in-situ instruments onboard ADITYA-L1, we will be able to study the origin of the solar wind, its acceleration to supersonic speeds, the evolution of CMEs and their effect on the space weather.
Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, Director, ARIES