Aditya -L1 successfully completes second earth-bound manoeuvre: ISRO

Aditya-L1, India’s first space-based mission to study the Sun, successfully performed its second Earth-bound manoeuvre on Tuesday at around 3 pm, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.

The process for the satellite’s final placement at the L1 point will require a series of intricate manoeuvres – with the first one being performed on Sunday.

“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,” the ISRO wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The next manoeuvre is scheduled for September 10 around 2:30 pm, the space agency said.

The country’s maiden solar mission that carries seven different payloads to have a detailed study of the moon was launched from Sriharikota on Saturday. 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.

According to ISRO, Aditya-L1 will neither land on the sun nor approach the sun any closer.

While the mission is expected to provide data for the next five years, experts believe that there is a possibility it may go on for another 10 or 15 years.

This is the second big mission after India created history as the Chandrayaan-3 lander module successfully landed on the moon’s South Pole on August 23 – making it the first country to have ever achieved it. Overall, India became the fourth country – after the US, China, and Russia – to have successfully landed on the moon’s surface.