ISRO's Aditya L1 successfully undergoes third earth-bound manoeuvre

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, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has 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," ISRO said in a post on social media platform X.

The new orbit attained is 296 km x 71767 km, it said, adding that the next manoeuvre is scheduled for 15 September, at around 2.00 am.

Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space-based observatory that will study the sun from a halo orbit around the first sun-earth Lagrange point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million (15 lakh) km from Earth.

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