Bengaluru: The country’s first solar mission, Aditya L1, was successfully launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) from ISTRAC Bengaluru. The Indian Space Agency stated in a tweet that ISTRAC successfully completed the Earthbound manoeuvre this morning and that the spacecraft has attained a new orbit of 245 kilometres by 22,459 km. It went on to say that the satellite is sound and functioning regularly.
The following manoeuvre is set on September 5 at approximately 3:00 pm. The satellite will perform four Earth-bound orbital rotations before entering a transfer orbit in 125 days that will take it to the Lagrange point L1. At L1, which is around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, the Aditya L1 mission will undertake in-situ studies of the solar wind and offer information on the solar corona. Yesterday, the Aditya L1 satellite had been successfully launched by Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C57.