The second Earth-bound manoeuvre of the Aditya L-1 mission to study the Sun has been is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru.
“ISTRAC/ISRO’s ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation,” ISRO said.
The manoeuvre was performed in the early hours of September 5 and the new orbit attained is 282 k.m. x 40,225 k.m.
Three more manoeuvres are scheduled to take place. The next manoeuvre is scheduled for September 10, 2023, around 02:30 Hrs. IST.
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 satellite spends its whole mission life orbiting around L1 in an irregularly shaped orbit in a plane roughly perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and the Sun.
Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space based observatory to study the Sun from a halo orbit around first sun-earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from earth.
The first earth-bound manoeuvre was successfully performed on September 3.
ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C57) on September 2 had successfully launched the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, from the Second Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota.
After a flight duration of 63 minutes and 20 seconds, Aditya-L1 spacecraft was successfully injected into an elliptical orbit of 235 x 19,500 k.m. around the earth.
According to ISRO, a satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation /eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real time.
Aditya-L1 carries seven scientific payloads indigenously developed by ISRO and national research laboratories including Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, and Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune.
The payloads are to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors.
(With inputs from PTI)
