Solar exploration: A sunrace of significant global missions
Sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. This was the first time ever that a spacecraft touched the Sun, according to NASA.
ET's Aditiya-L1 coverage: Track the developments here
In February 2020, the NASA joined hands with the European Space Agency (ESA) and launched The Solar Orbiter to collect data to find out how the Sun created and controlled the constantly changing space environment throughout the solar system.
Other active solar missions by the NASA are Advanced Composition Explorer launched in August, 1997; Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory in October, 2006; Solar Dynamics Observatory in February, 2010; and Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph launched in June, 2013.
Also, in December, 1995, NASA, ESA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) jointly launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
Japan: JAXA, the Japan's space agency, launched its first solar observation satellite, Hinotori (ASTRO-A), in 1981.
The objective was to study solar flares using hard X-rays, according to JAXA.
JAXA's other solar exploratory missions are Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) launched in 1991; SOHO (along with NASA and ESA) in 1995; and Transient Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), along with NASA, in 1998.
In 2006, Hinode (SOLAR-B) was launched, which was the successor to Yohkoh (SOLAR-A), the orbiting solar observatory. Japan launched it in collaboration with the US and the UK.
The objective of Hinode, an observatory satellite, is to study the impact of the Sun on the Earth.
Yohkoh's objective was to observe solar flares and the solar corona. It was the first satellite to track almost an entire 11-year solar activity cycle, according to JAXA's website.
Europe: In October, 1990,
