Bengaluru, Sep 30: ISRO said on Saturday the Aditya-L1 spacecraft has travelled beyond a distance of 9.2 lakh km from Earth, successfully escaping the sphere of Earth’s influence.
It is now navigating its path towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), the Bengaluru-headquartered national space agency said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
“This is the second time in succession that ISRO could send a spacecraft outside the sphere of influence of the Earth, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission,” it said.
The ISRO said earlier this month the Aditya-L1 solar mission spacecraft has commenced collecting data which will help scientists analyse the behaviour of particles surrounding Earth.
Data collected around L1 would provide insights into the origin, acceleration, and anisotropy of solar wind and space weather phenomena, it said.
The launch of Aditya-L1 by PSLV-C57 rocket was successfully accomplished by ISRO on September 2.
Aditya-L1 spacecraft carries a total seven different payloads to study the Sun, four of which will observe the light from the Sun and the remaining three will measure in-situ parameters of the plasma and magnetic fields.
Aditya-L1 will be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian Point 1 (L1), which is 1.5 million km from the Earth in the direction of the Sun. It will revolve around the Sun with the same relative position and hence can see the Sun continuously.
The Aditya-L1 mission will take around 109 Earth days after launch to reach the halo orbit around the L1 point, which is about 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) from Earth.
The spacecraft is planned to remain in the halo orbit for its mission duration while being maintained at a stationkeeping Δv of 0.2–4 m/s per year.
The 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) satellite carries seven science payloads with various objectives, including instruments to measure coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, coronal magnetometry, origin and monitoring of near-UV solar radiation (which drives Earth’s upper atmospheric dynamics and global climate), coupling of the solar photosphere to the chromosphere and corona, and in-situ characterisations of the space environment around Earth by measuring energetic particle fluxes and magnetic fields of the solar wind, and solar magnetic storms. (Agencies)
