India’s maiden solar mission Aditya-L1 successfully reached its destination and was placed in a halo orbit around the L1 point on January 6, 2024.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the solar mission on September 2, 2023. The L1 point is located roughly 1.5 million km from Earth and will enable the spacecraft to view the sun continuously.
ISRO Chairman S Somnath told reporters that the halo orbit insertion process was done as intended. “Today’s event was to place the Aditya-L1 in the precise halo orbit. The spacecraft was moving towards the halo orbit but we had to make some corrections to put it in the right place. If we do not do the correction today there could have been a possibility that it could escape from this point (L-1 point). But we would not have allowed that to happen as there are some contingencies in place, but I am only telling mathematically it can escape.”
“So that has been very precisely done [placing the spacecraft in the halo orbit]. What we have achieved today is exact placement based on our measurement and very correct prediction of the velocity requirement. Right now, in our calculation the spacecraft is in the right place,” he added.
