The Aditya-L1 spacecraft, India’s first solar mission, successfully completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point, marking a significant milestone in space exploration. Launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on September 2 last year, Aditya-L1 was inserted into its targeted halo orbit on January 6. ISRO expressed a lot of details about the solar observatory and its very first halo orbit. ISRO expressed that the Aditya-L1 mission is actually formulated to study the Sun. The observatory, as explained by ISRO, takes over 178 days in order to make one complete revolution around the L1 point.
Aditya-L1, positioned at the Lagrangian point L1, takes 178 days to complete a revolution around this crucial point. During its journey in the halo orbit, the spacecraft faces various perturbing forces that may deviate it from its intended path. To counteract this, two station-keeping manoeuvres were conducted on February 22 and June 7 to maintain the spacecraft’s orbit.
A recent third station-keeping manoeuvre ensured Aditya-L1’s transition into the second halo orbit path around L1. This intricate journey involves intricate modelling of complex dynamics to accurately predict trajectories and plan precise orbit adjustments. The successful execution of these manoeuvres validates the state-of-the-art flight dynamics software developed in-house by URSC-ISRO for the Aditya-L1 mission.
Aditya-L1: Celebration of First Orbit Completion
Today, Aditya-L1 completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point. It took 178 days, to complete a revolution.Today’s station-keeping manoeuvre ensured a seamless transition into the second halo orbit. pic.twitter.com/SemsQe2lVs
— ISRO ADITYA-L1 (@ISRO_ADITYAL1) July 2, 2024
A diagram has also been released by ISRO that depicts the orbit of the spacecraft. This orbit is demonstrated as a blue trajectory that is projected on the X-Y plane. The picture thus demonstrates the potential divergent path that the spacecraft could have pursued sans accurate maneuvering.
The blue trajectory, in the figure, is the orbit around the Lagrangian point L1. This trajectory is a 3-dimensional trajectory, and what is shown is the projection of it in the X-Y plane.”SK#1, 2 & 3 are the Station Keeping maneuvers by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft.
The final firing of the thrusters, ie. SK#3 on July 2, placed the spacecraft back in the required orbit,” it stated.Moreover, if an accurate firing was not done, the spacecraft would have moved away in a trajectory shown in green colour.The X-Y axes are marked in the distance of km, with Lagrangian point L1 at the origin, it added.
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