Isro set to place Aditya-L1 in final orbit tomorrow. All you need to know

Isro launched the Aditya-L1 solar observatory on September 2, 2023, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre to study the Sun

Aditya-L1, India's ambitious solar exploration mission, is getting closer to its final destination, with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) set to attempt a crucial orbit manoeuvre to place the spacecraft into its final orbit tomorrow (on January 6) evening.

Isro would attempt to place the spacecraft in a 'halo orbit' around Lagrange Point 1 (L1) for an unobstructed view of the Sun.

"Aditya-L1 would reach its L1 point on January 6 at 4 pm. We would do the final manoeuvre to strategically place it in that halo orbit." said Isro Chairman S Somanath.

L1 is one of the five points in space where the Sun's and Earth's gravitational forces produce heightened zones of attraction and repulsion that roughly balance each other. The point is about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, accounting for only one per cent of the total distance between the two bodies.

Following the successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 near the Moon's south pole, the Isro launched the country's first solar mission, Aditya-L1, on September 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is meant to provide remote observations of the solar corona as well as in-situ observations of the solar wind at L1 (Sun-Earth Lagrangian point), which is approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.

It is India's first dedicated space mission to observe the Sun. The project, which is aimed at researching the Sun from an orbit around the L1, has seven payloads that will observe the photosphere, chromosphere, and the Sun's outermost layers, the corona, in various wavebands.