ISRO’s solar mission Aditya-L1 successfully performed another manoeuvre on September 18, 2023, putting it on course to reach the Sun-Earth L1 point. The spacecraft is now about 1.3 million kilometers away from Earth and is expected to reach its final destination in early October.
The L1 point is a special location in space where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth are equal and opposite. This makes it a stable place for spacecraft to orbit, and it is also a good vantage point for studying the Sun.
Aditya-L1 is carrying seven scientific instruments to study the Sun’s corona, chromosphere, and photosphere. It will also measure the solar wind and its impact on Earth’s magnetosphere.
The mission is expected to provide new insights into the Sun’s activity and its impact on Earth’s climate. It will also help scientists to better understand the solar wind and its role in space weather.
It will be injected into an orbit around L1 through a manoeuvre after about 110 days. This is the fifth consecutive time ISRO has successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space.”
Earlier, a launcher carrying the Aditya-L1 spacecraft blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Station at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
The primary objectives of India’s maiden solar mission include collecting scientific data and marking another milestone in India’s solar exploration efforts.
The agency had earlier posted on X, “Aditya-L1 Mission: Aditya-L1 has commenced collecting scientific data. The sensors of the STEPS instrument have begun measuring supra-thermal and energetic ions and electrons at distances greater than 50,000 km from Earth. This data helps scientists analyze the behaviour of particles surrounding Earth. The figure displays variations in the energetic particle environment, collected by one of the units.”
The Supra Thermal and Energetic Particle Spectrometer (STEPS) instrument, a part of the Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX) payload, also started its data-gathering operations earlier.
ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C57) had on September 2 successfully launched Aditya-L1 from the Second Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space-based observatory that will study the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from the Earth.