New Delhi, India

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed that India's space-based solar observatory, Aditya-L1, on Tuesday completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point. 

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The Indian space agency said that it took 178 days to complete a revolution after it was inserted in its targeted halo orbit on January 6, 2024. 

Aditya-L1 spacecraft has been designed and developed by ISRO with an aim to study the solar atmosphere. The mission is an Indian solar observatory at Lagrangian point L1, which was launched on September 2, 2023. 

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ISRO said that the spacecraft is subjected to various perturbing forces that might cause it to depart from the targeted orbit during its travel in the halo orbit. 

"It underwent two station-keeping manoeuvres on February 22 and June 7, respectively, to maintain this orbit. Today's 3rd station-keeping manoeuvre has ensured that its travel continued in to the second halo orbit path around L1," ISRO said. 

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The space agency said that the journey of Aditya L1 around the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point involves the modelling of complex dynamics. 

"The understanding of various perturbing forces acting on the spacecraft helped in determining the trajectory accurately and planning precise orbit maneuvers," ISRO said. 

The flight dynamics software developed in-house at the UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC) for the Aditya-L1 missions stands "fully validated" with today's manoeuvre. 

ISRO also shared a diagram to illustrate the latest milestone achieved by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft. See the image here: 

ISRO

While explaining, ISRO said the blue trajectory in the image is the orbit around the Lagrangian point L1. This trajectory is three-dimensional and what is shown is the projection of it in the X-Y plane. 

SK#1, 2 and 3 are the station-keeping manoeuvres by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, the space agency said, further adding that the final firing of the thrusters, SK#3 on July 2, placed the spacecraft back in the required orbit. 

ISRO said that if an accurate firing was not done, the spacecraft would have moved away in a trajectory shown in green colour. The X-Y axes are marked at a distance of km, with Lagrangian point L1 at the origin. 

(With inputs from agencies)