BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday released a selfie taken
by the camera onboard Aditya-L1 along with images of the Earth and Moon. In the self-portrait, two
payloads – Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUIT) onboard the Aditya-L1 spacecraft can be seen.
The images released by ISRO on Thursday show a scenic picture of the Earth and the Moon wherein the planet’s one-half is covered with shadow with a small object in the corner which is the Moon.
“Onlooker! Aditya-L1, destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point, takes a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon,” said ISRO on social media platform X. The images were captured on September 4.
Developed indigenously by India, the spacecraft will travel 1.5 million km from the Earth and has already completed two Earth-bound manoeuvres.
Aditya-L1 will perform three more before the slingshot which will place the spacecraft in the intended Lagrange Point (L1) orbit. The mission will take 125 days to complete. According to scientists, the satellite is healthy. The second Earth-bound manoeuvre was performed successfully from ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network) on September 5. The new orbit achieved was 282 km X 40,225 km.
“The next manoeuvres (EBN#3) is scheduled for September 10, 2023, around 02:30 Hrs. IST,” the space agency said in a statement. The first manoeuvre were performed on September 3, one day after the launch.
The Aditya-L1 mission was lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre from Sriharikota on September 2, which is India’s maiden mission to study the Sun. With seven payloads onboard, the major objective of the mission includes observing the solar atmosphere, mainly the chromosphere and corona (the outermost layers of the Sun) and conducting studies to record the local environment from L1. The satellite Aditya-L1 will travel only about 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.