NEW DELHI, Sept 10: The third Earth-bound manoeuvre of the Aditya L-1 mission to study the Sun has been performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru in the early hours of 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,” ISRO posted on X. The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km, the space agency said. Two more manoeuvres are scheduled to take place.
“The next manoeuvre (EBN#4) is scheduled for September 15, 2023, around 02:00 Hrs. IST,” ISRO said. After the final manoeuvre on September 18, Aditya-L1 undergoes a Trans-Lagrangian1 insertion manoeuvre, marking the beginning of its 110-day trajectory to the destination around the L1 Lagrange point. Upon arrival at the L1 point, another manoeuvre binds Aditya-L1 to an orbit around L1, a balanced gravitational location between the Earth and the Sun.
The spacecraft will perform orbital manoeuvres by using its Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) engine to reach L1. Aditya-L1 will stay approximately 1.5 million km away from earth, directed towards the sun, which is about 1% of the earth-sun distance. On September 2, ISRO launched India’s first solar observatory mission — Aditya-L1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
On September 7 ISRO on Thursday released a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon taken by the camera on-board Aditya-L1 solar mission spacecraft.
(Manas Dasgupta)