India's Aditya L1 Takes A Selfie, Pics of Earth And Moon

Aditya L1, the first space-based Indian mission to study the Sun, has taken a selfie and the images of the Earth and the Moon, the ISRO said on Thursday.

"Aditya-L1, destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point, takes a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon," the ISRO tweeted.

"The VELC and SUIT instrument as seen by the camera on-board Aditya-L1 September 4, 2023," the video shared by the ISRO claims.

Aditya-L1 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 Earth.

The first earth-bound manoeuvre was successfully performed on September 3 and the next manoeuvre (EBN#3) is scheduled for September 10, 2023, around 02:30 Hrs. IST, the ISRO said.

The spacecraft will undergo two more earth-bound orbital manoeuvres before placing in the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1. Aditya-L1 is expected to arrive at the intended orbit at the L1 point after about 127 days.

ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C57) on September 2 had successfully launched the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, from the Second Launch Pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota.

After a flight duration of 63 minutes and 20 seconds, Aditya-L1 spacecraft was successfully injected into an elliptical orbit of 235x19500 km around the Earth.

According to ISRO, a satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation /eclipses. This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real-time.

Aditya-L1 carries seven scientific payloads indigenously developed by ISRO and national research laboratories including Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, and Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune.

The payloads are to observe the photosphere, chromosphere and the outermost layers of the Sun (the corona) using electromagnetic and particle and magnetic field detectors.

Using the special vantage point L1, four payloads directly view the Sun and the remaining three payloads carry out in-situ studies of particles and fields at the Lagrange point L1, thus providing important scientific studies of the propagatory effect of solar dynamics in the interplanetary medium.

The suits of Aditya L1 payloads are expected to provide the most crucial information to understand the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather, propagation of particles and fields.