India's Aditya-L1 put on route to observe Sun

Aditya-L1 mission update: Indian space agency in the wee hours of Tuesday sent off the Aditya-L1 solar observatory towards the Sun by successfully inserting it at the Trans-Lagrangian Point 1. According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Aditya-L1, the country's space-based solar observatory was inserted at the Trans-Lagrangian Point 1 at 2 a.m. on Tuesday. "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 manoeuvre after about 110 days," ISRO said. This is the fifth consecutive time ISRO has successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space. ISRO has transferred its spacecraft thrice towards the moon and once towards Mars. And the Tuesday transfer towards the Sun is the fifth time. Aditya-L1 was orbited in low earth orbit (LEO) on September 2 by an Indian rocket called Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle –XL (PSLV-XL) variant.

The spacecraft's orbit has been raised by ISRO four times since then. As the spacecraft travels towards Lagrange Point (L1), it will exit the earth's gravitational Sphere of Influence (SOI). After the exit from SOI, the cruise phase will start and subsequently, the spacecraft will be injected into a large halo orbit around the L1 -- the point where the gravitational pull of two large bodies - Sun and Earth - will be equal and hence the spacecraft will not gravitate towards any one of the planet. The total travel time from the launch to the L1 would take about four months for Aditya-L1 and the distance covered will be about 1.5 million km from the Earth.

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