The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that on Tuesday, India’s maiden solar mission, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point.
The Aditya-L1 was launched on September 2, 2023, and inserted in its targeted halo orbit on January 6, 2024. In the Halo orbit, the spacecraft takes 178 days to complete a revolution around the L1 point.
“During its travel in the halo orbit, Aditya-L1 spacecraft will be subjected to various perturbing forces that will cause it to depart from the targeted orbit. It underwent two station-keeping manoeuvres on February 22 and June 7, respectively, to maintain this orbit. Today’s (July 4) third station-keeping manoeuvre has ensured that its travel continued into the second halo orbit path around L1,” ISRO said.
It added that this journey of Aditya L1 around Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point involves modeling of complex dynamics.
“The understanding of various perturbing forces acting on the spacecraft helped in determining the trajectory accurately and planning precise orbit manoeuvres. With today’s manoeuvre, the state-of-the-art flight dynamics software developed in-house at URSC-ISRO for the Aditya-L1 missions stands fully validated,” the space agency added.
