Aditya L1 escapes Earth’s sphere of influence, navigating towards Lagrange point 1, says ISRO

India’s solar mission Aditya L1 has travelled beyond a distance of 9.2 lakh kilometres from the Earth and has successfully escaped the sphere of the Earth’s influence.

It is now navigating its path towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Saturday.

“This is the second time in succession that ISRO could send a spacecraft outside the sphere of influence of the Earth, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission”, the Indian space agency said in a post on social media platform X.

This comes days after the spacecraft underwent a key manoeuvre in the early hours of September 19, marking the beginning of the spacecraft’s 110-day trajectory to the destination around the L1 Lagrange point, a balanced gravitational location between the Earth and the Sun

“Off to Sun-Earth L1 point! The Trans-Lagrangian Point 1 Insertion (TL1I) manoeuvre is performed successfully. The spacecraft is now on a trajectory that will take it to the Sun-Earth L1 point. It will be injected into an orbit around L1 through a maneuver after about 110 days”, ISRO had said in a post on X.

Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space-based observatory to study the Sun from a halo orbit around first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), located roughly 1.5 million km from earth, which is about one per cent of the Earth-Sun distance.

The Sun is a giant sphere of gas, and the Aditya-L1 spacecraft would study the outer atmosphere of the Sun. It will neither land on the Sun nor approach the Sun any closer.

Since its launch from Sriharikota, Aditya-L1, during its journey around the Earth, underwent four Earth-bound manoeuvres on September 3, 5 ,10 and 15 respectively, during which it gained the necessary velocity for its further journey to L1.