India’s Aditya-L1 spacecraft successfully escapes sphere of Earth’s influence: ISRO

India’s solar mission spacecraft, Aditya-L1, has travelled beyond a distance of 9.2 lakh kilometres from Earth, successfully escaping the sphere of Earth’s influence and is now navigating its path towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Saturday (Sep 30).

“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.

Earlier this month, ISRO said that the Aditya-L1 solar mission spacecraft has started collecting data which will further help scientists study the behaviour of particles surrounding Earth.

The data that will be collected around L1 would provide insights into the origin, acceleration, and anisotropy of solar wind and space weather phenomena, it said.

India’s maiden sun mission was launched on September 2 from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota. The spacecraft has undergone three Earth-bound manoeuvres, with the first, second and third taking place on September 3, 5 and 10 respectively. 

The manoeuvres are being performed during the spacecraft’s 16-day journey around the Earth where the spacecraft will gain the necessary velocity for its further journey to L1. The L1 point was discovered by mathematician Joseph Louis Lagrange. 

It is considered to be the most significant of the Lagrangian points for observation of the Sun.

Aditya-L1 is equipped with seven scientific payloads developed indigenously by the ISRO and various national research laboratories, including the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), in the Indian cities of Bengaluru and Pune, respectively.

These payloads are designed to study the photosphere, chromosphere, and the outermost layers of the Sun, known as the corona, using electromagnetic, particle, and magnetic field detectors.

Positioned at the advantageous L1 point, four of these payloads will directly observe the Sun, while the remaining three will conduct in-situ studies of particles and fields at Lagrange point L1. 

(With inputs from agencies)

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