Aditya L1 completes third Earth-bound manoeuvre: ISRO

Aditya L1 spacecraft, India's first space-based mission to study the Sun, successfully underwent its third earth-bound manoeuvre in the early hours of Sunday, ISRO said.

The space agency's Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) carried out the operation.

"The third Earth-bound manoeuvre (EBN#3) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. ISRO's ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru, SDSC-SHAR and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation," the Indian Space Research Organisation ISRO) said in a post on social media platform X.

The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km, it said, adding the next manoeuvre is scheduled on September 15, around 2 am.

Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space-based observatory that will study the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from the Earth.

The first and second earth-bound manoeuvres were successfully performed on September 3 and 5, respectively. The spacecraft will undergo one more earth-bound orbital manoeuvres before it is placed in the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1.