ISRO’s Aditya L1 successfully performs 2nd earth-bound manoeuvre

Aditya-L1 spacecraft, India’s first solar mission, has successfully performed the second earth-bound manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Tuesday. “Aditya-L1 Mission:The second Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#2) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. ISTRAC/ISRO’s ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation. The new orbit attained is 282 km x 40225 km,” ISRO said in a post on ‘X’ in the early hours of Tuesday. “The next manoeuvre (EBN#3) is scheduled for September 10, around 02:30 Hrs. IST,” ISRO added. 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 Saturday. 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.