Bengaluru: India’s first solar mission, Aditya L1 has successfully performed the third earth-bound manoeuvre, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Sunday.
“The third Earth-bound manoeuvre (EBN#3) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. ISRO’s ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru, SDSC-SHAR and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation. The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km,” ISRO said in a post on ‘X’.
The next manoeuvre (EBN#4) is scheduled for September 15, 2023, around 02:00 Hrs. IST,” it added. Earlier on September 5, Aditya L1 successfully performed the second earth-bound manoeuvre, attaining an orbit of 282 km x 40225 km. After the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 near the South pole of the moon, the ISRO launched the country’s maiden solar mission — Aditya-L1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on September 2.
It carried seven different payloads to have a detailed study of the Sun, four of which will observe the light from the Sun and the other three will measure in-situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields. Aditya-L1 will be placed in a halo orbit around Lagrangian Point 1 (or L1), which is 1.5 million km away from the Earth in the direction of the sun. It is expected to cover the distance in four months’ time.
Aditya-L1 will stay approximately 1.5 million km away from Earth, directed towards the Sun, which is about 1 per cent of the Earth-Sun distance. The Sun is a giant sphere of gas and Aditya-L1 would study the outer atmosphere of the Sun. ISRO said Aditya-L1 will neither land on the sun nor approach the sun any closer.
