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Mahesh

09/10/23 09:44 AM IST

Aditya L1 corrects trajectory

In News
  • The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) recently announced that it had carried out a Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) for its spacecraft Aditya L1, to ensure it reaches its destination at the Sun Earth Lagrangian point 1.
Trajectory correction
  • Unlike lunar missions, which take about three weeks to cover the 384,400 km distance to the moon, deep space missions to Mars (distance of 225 million km) and the Lagrangian Point 1 (distance of 1.5 million km) take several months (Mars around 11 months and L1 around four months).
  • The longer distances require the mission to incorporate trajectory correction plans using orbit determination calculations, to ensure the spacecraft remains on course for its destination.
  • The Mars Orbiter Mission undertaken by ISRO between November 5, 2013 to September 24, 2014 required three TCMs on November 14, 2013, June 11, 2014 and September 22, 2014.
  • When it reaches the L1 point around the second week of January 2024, Aditya-L1 will carry out a manoeuvre to enable it to orbit around L1, which is a balanced gravitational location between the Earth and the Sun.
  • The spacecraft will spend its mission life “orbiting around L1 in an irregularly shaped orbit in a plane roughly perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and the Sun.
  • L1 is about 1.5 million km from the earth and the distance of L1 from earth is approximately 1% of the earth-sun distance.
Aditya L1
  • India’s first solar observatory mission, Aditya-L1, was launched on September 2 by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.
  • The ISRO said that as Aditya-L1 continues to move ahead, the magnetometer payload will be turned on again within a few days.
  • The magnetometer payload is developed at Laboratory for Electro Optics Systems, Bengaluru, and is capable of measuring interplanetary magnetic fields at the L1 point.
  • Aditya-L1 is expected to arrive at the L1 point by January 2024.
Source- Indian Express

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