New Delhi: ISRO has successfully performed the fourth orbit-raising manoeuvre of Aditya L1 (Aditya L1 Mission) today, i.e. on September 15, at around 2 a.m. The thrusters were fired for a short duration to increase the orbit. Now, the minimum distance of Aditya L1 from Earth will be 256 km, while the maximum distance will be 1 lakh 21 thousand 973 km. Aditya Solar Mission was launched on September 2.
ISRO said that this operation was carried out from ISTRAC Bengaluru. The satellite was also tracked from ISRO’s ground stations in Mauritius and Port Blair during this period. The next orbit-raising manoeuvre will be done on September 19 at 2 am, to place it in the orbit of Lagrange point L1.
Aditya L1’s orbit was raised for the third time at around 2.30 p.m. on September 10. Before that, the second orbit-raising manoeuvre was done at 2.45 p.m. on September 5.
what is the Lagrangian point?
Lagrangian points are special locations between the Earth and the Sun, where an object can stay stationary. There are five such points (or parking areas), named after the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange, who won a prize for his research paper – ‘Essay sur le probleme des trois corps, 1772. At the Lagrange point, the gravitational force between the Sun and the Earth is balanced. This makes it easier to keep a satellite at this point.
Aditya has 7 payloads
Aditya L1 mission has 7 instruments on board, which are – Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC), Solar Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), Aditya Solar Wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX), Plasma Analyst Package for Aditya (PAPA), Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS), High Energy L1 Orbiting All these will be very useful in studying the Sun.
