The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning to launch the first solar mission, Aditya-L1. The project is approved and the satellite will be launched during 2019 – 2020 timeframe by PSLV-XL from Sriharikota.

Aditya-L1 mission is aimed at studying the Sun from an orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point 1 (L1) which is about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. It would carry seven payloads to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun, the corona in different wavebands.

Aditya-L1 is a fully indigenous effort with the participation of national institutions. Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru is the lead institute for the development of Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune is developing the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUIT) payload for Aditya-L1 mission.

Aditya-L1 can provide observations on the corona and in addition can provide observations on the solar Chromosphere using the UV payload and on the flares using the X-ray payloads. The particle detectors and the magnetometer payload can provide information on charged particles and the magnetic field reaching the halo orbit around L1.