The Indian Space Research Organisation on Tuesday said that its Aditya-L1 spacecraft successfully left the earth’s orbit and has been put on a trajectory towards Lagrange Point 1 from where it will continuously study the sun.
The space agency said that the spacecraft will travel in the trajectory for 110 days before being inserted into an orbit around Lagrange Point 1, which is about 1.5 million kilometers from the earth.
There are five Lagrange Points between any two celestial bodies and they act as a “parking lot”, allowing objects to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces. This reduces fuel consumption by the spacecraft.
“This is the fifth consecutive time ISRO has successfully transferred an object on a trajectory toward another celestial body or location in space,” the space agency said.
ISRO had launched its first mission to study the sun on September 2, days after the agency made history by becoming the first to land a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon.
The major objectives of the mission include understanding the problem of coronal heating and studying solar winds that can cause disturbance on earth.
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