ISRO's Sun Mission, Aditya-L1, Undergoes 3rd Successful Orbit-Raising Manoeuvre

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft underwent a successful third earth-bound orbit raising manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said today.

The orbit-raising manoeuvre was directed from ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru and the space agency's ground stations in Mauritius, Bengaluru, Port Blair tracked the satellite during the critical operation to take India's first solar mission one step closer to its destination.

After the successful manoeuvre, the satellite's new orbit attained 296 km x 71767 km. The next manoeuvre is scheduled for September 15 around 2 am, ISRO said.

ISRO's ambitious mission to study the sun was successfully launched on September 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota. 

The spacecraft already completed two earth-bound orbital manoeuvres and will perform one more before being placed in the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at the intended orbit at the L1 point after 125 days. Earlier, the Aditya-L1 satellite shared stunning images of the Earth and the  Moon.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft will observe the sun from Lagrange point 1 or L-1 point, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth. According to ISRO, a spacecraft placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation or eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing solar activities and their effect on space weather in real-time.

The major objectives of the mission are - To study the physics of solar corona and its heating mechanism, the solar wind acceleration, coupling and dynamics of the solar atmosphere, solar wind distribution and temperature anisotropy, and the origin of Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and flares and near-earth space weather.

The successful launch of the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, which was onboard the PSLV rocket, added another feather in ISRO's cap as one of the leading space agencies in the world. Almost two weeks before the launch of the sun mission, ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 soft-landed near the south polar region of the moon, making India the first country to successfully soft-land in that region and fourth on the moon's surface.