Sun Mission: Aditya L1 Successfully Completes Third Earth-Bound Manoeuvre

The third Earth-bound manoeuvre of the Aditya L-1 mission to study the Sun has been performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru in the early hours of September 10.

“The third Earth-bound manoeuvre (EBN#3) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. ISRO’s ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru, SDSC-SHAR and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation,” ISRO posted on X (formerly Twitter).

What's happening?

The new orbit attained by the satellite is 296km x 71767 km. A total of five such orbit manoeuvring will be performed during the satellite's revolution around the Earth of which three have been successfully performed.

Earlier, the second earth-bound manoeuvre was successfully performed on September 5, attaining an orbit of 282 km x 40225 km while the 1st was performed on 3 September.

What does Aditya L1's orbit raising maneouver mean?

An orbital manoeuvre, also called as burn, is a regular protocol during a spaceflight. During this exercise, the orbit of the satellite or spacecraft, is increased by using propulsion systems. This process will include rockets firing and also adjustment of angles.

To understand the process, take the example of a person on a swing. To make the swing go higher, a pressure is applied when the swing is coming down towards the ground. Similarly, once Aditya L1 will gain enough velocity, it will slingshot around to its intended path towards L1.

What's next?

After the final manoeuvre on September 18, Aditya-L1 undergoes a Trans-Lagrangian1 insertion manoeuvre, marking the beginning of its 110-day trajectory to the destination around the L1 Lagrange point. Upon arrival at the L1 point, another manoeuvre binds Aditya-L1 to an orbit around L1, a balanced gravitational location between the Earth and the Sun.

The spacecraft will perform orbital manoeuvres by using its Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) engine to reach L1.Aditya-L1 will stay approximately 1.5 million km away from earth, directed towards the sun, which is about 1% of the earth-sun distance.

On September 2, ISRO launched India’s first solar observatory mission — Aditya-L1 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.On September 7 ISRO on Thursday released a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon taken by the camera on-board Aditya-L1 solar mission spacecraft.

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