Noting that Sunday’s manoeuvre took place at 2.30am, Isro said, “The ground stations in Mauritius, Bengaluru, SDSC-SHAR (Sriharikota) and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation.”
The spacecraft is now in a 296-kilometer-by-71,767-kilometer orbit, and its next Earthbound maneuver is scheduled for 2 a.m. on September 15th.
Including the Sept. 15 maneuver, Aditya-L1 will have two more maneuvers to perform for the spacecraft to gain the necessary speed for its flight to reach L1.
Once Earth-bound maneuvers are complete — the 16th day from launch — Aditya-L1 will undergo a Trans-Lagrangian1 Insertion (TLI) maneuver, marking the start of its 110-day path to L1.
L1 – which is about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth – points to the Lagrange-1 point in the Earth-Sun system. It is a location in space where the gravitational forces of two celestial bodies, such as the Sun and Earth, are in equilibrium. This allows the object placed there to remain relatively stable with respect to both celestial bodies.
Upon reaching point L1, another maneuver attaches Aditya-L1 to an orbit around L1, whereby the satellite will spend its entire mission orbiting L1 in an irregularly shaped orbit in a plane roughly perpendicular to the Earth-Sun line.
Earlier, on Tuesday, Istrac scientists successfully executed the second Earth-bound maneuver of Aditya-L1 and put the spacecraft into an orbit of 282 km x 40,225 km.
Istrac/Isro ground stations in Mauritius, Bengaluru and Port Blair tracked the satellite during the second ground-bound operation.
On September 3, a day after the launch of Aditya-L1, Isro completed its first Earthbound maneuver and placed the spacecraft in a 245 km x 22,459 km orbit.
Aditya-L1 is a satellite dedicated to the comprehensive study of the Sun. It has seven distinct payloads – five by Isro and two by academic institutions in collaboration with Isro – developed indigenously.
with Aditya-L1ISRO will venture into the study of solar activities and their impact on space weather. The scientific objectives of Aditya-L1 include studying coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar atmospheric dynamics, and temperature variation.
Earth, moon and selfie
Last week, Aditya-L1 took some great photos as it orbited Earth. “Aditya-L1, heading to the Sun-Earth L1 point, takes a selfie and images of the Earth and Moon,” said Isro, which released these images, the first taken by Aditya-L1.
In the profile image, two main payloads are visible, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) for corona imaging and spectroscopic studies and the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) for imaging the photosphere and chromosphere (narrowband and broadband). In the other image, the camera on board the vehicle shows the Earth from a close distance and the Moon from afar.
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