ISRO Aditya L1 successfully completed its second Earth-bound maneuver, with a third scheduled for September 10th

ISRO said that Aditya L1, India's first space-based mission to study the Sun, successfully completed its second earth-bound manoeuvre on Tuesday morning. ISRO's Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (ISTRAC) carried out the operation.

"The second Earth-bound manoeuvre (EBN#2) is successfully completed from ISTRAC, Bengaluru." ISTRAC/ISRO ground stations in Mauritius, Bengaluru, and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation. ISRO announced the new orbit via a post on X (previously Twitter).

Aditya-L1 Mission:
The second Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#2) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru.

ISTRAC/ISRO's ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation.

The new orbit attained is 282 km x 40225 km.

The next… pic.twitter.com/GFdqlbNmWg

— ISRO (@isro) September 4, 2023

The next maneuver (EBN#3) is set on September 10, 2023, at around 02:30 Hrs. IST.

Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space observatory to study the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

On September 3, the first earthbound maneuver was successfully completed.

Before entering the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1, the spacecraft will do two additional earthbound orbital maneuvers. After approximately 127 days, Aditya-L1 is scheduled to arrive at its planned orbit at the L1 point.

On September 2, ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C57) successfully launched the Aditya-L1 spacecraft from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft successfully injected into an elliptical orbit of 235x19500 km around the Earth after a mission length of 63 minutes and 20 seconds.

According to ISRO, a satellite in halo orbit at the L1 point has the significant benefit of continually observing the Sun with no occultation/eclipses. This will give us a significant edge in studying solar activity and its impact on space weather in real time.

Aditya-L1 contains seven scientific payloads built in-house by ISRO and national research institutes such as the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune.

The payloads will use electromagnetic particle and magnetic field detectors to examine the photosphere, chromosphere, and the Sun's outermost layers (the corona).

Four payloads directly see the Sun from the exceptional vantage point L1, while the remaining three payloads conduct in-situ particle and field investigations at the Lagrange point L1, offering essential scientific studies of the propagatory influence of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium.

The Aditya L1 payload suites are intended to give the most critical information for understanding the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, space weather dynamics, and particle and field propagation.

Scientists believe that there are five Lagrangian sites (or parking lots) between the Earth and the Sun where a tiny object will prefer to stay if placed there. The Lagrange Points are called after the prize-winning article by Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, "Essai sur le Problème des Trois Corps, 1772." Spacecraft can exploit these places in space to stay there with less fuel use.

The gravitational attraction of the two huge things (the Sun and the Earth) matches the centripetal force required for a tiny object to move with them at a Lagrange point.