India’s solar mission Aditya-L1 has ‘successfully escaped sphere of Earth’s influence’

PTI, Oct 1, 2023, 9:31 AM IST

Bengaluru: 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.