India's Sun mission Aditya-L1 successfully performs third Earth-bound manoeuvre: ISRO

India's Sun mission Aditya-L1 has successfully performed the third Earth-bound manoeuvre, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Sunday (September 10). Sharing a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, ISRO said the maneuvre was performed from the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru. The space agency's ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru, SDSC-SHAR, and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation.

"The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km. The next manoeuvre (EBN#4) is scheduled for September 15, 2023, around 02:00 Hrs. IST," ISRO said in the post.

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Aditya-L1 was launched on September 2 to study the Sun. It is destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point. On September 5, Aditya-L1 performed the second Earth-bound manoeuvre. ISRO posted on X that the orbit attained in this manoeuvre was 282 km x 40225 km. The first manoeuvre was performedon September 3.

Aditya-L1 captures images of Earth and Moon

On Thursday, ISRO said took a selfie and clicked images of the Earth and Moon. "Aditya-L1, destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point, takes a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon," the space agency posted on X.

Aditya-L1 is destined to travel 1.5 million kilometres over four months, far short of the sun, which is 150 million km from Earth. It is meant to stop its journey in a kind of parking lot in space, called a Lagrange Point, where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, thereby reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.

The mission will carry out seven science experiments and will collect data for the next five years. It has been designed to provide remote observations of the solar corona and record solar winds.

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