The ISRO is now trying ahead to the upkeep and orbit orientation of Aditya L1, mentioned chief S Somanath after the photo voltaic mission spacecraft efficiently reached its ultimate vacation spot — Lagrange Point 1.

“We have been assured, every little thing went in keeping with plan. We have been sitting and having fun with. Now, we’ll look ahead in the direction of upkeep and orbit orientation. There are different satellites at L1 however ours is exclusive and extra refined,” Somanath told CNN-News18 in an exclusive conversation.

The ISRO chief said after the success of the solar mission, all focus will now be on Gaganyaan — India’s human spaceflight programme. “…In our spare time, we will work on NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission) and other projects,” he mentioned.

He added: “What we’ve achieved right this moment is the precise placement based mostly on our measurement and really right prediction of the rate requirement. Right now, in our calculation, it’s on the proper place however we’re going to monitor for the subsequent few hours to see whether or not it’s on the proper place,” he added.

Aditya L1 is India’s first space-based solar observatory to study the Sun, which helps sustain life on Earth. Its destination, the L1 point, is about 1.5 million km from Earth from where it will orbit the Sun and study its wonders, uninterrupted by eclipses and occultations. This will provide a greater advantage in observing solar activities and their effect on space weather in real time, ISRO officials said.

According to ISRO, the Halo-orbit insertion (HOI) of Aditya L1 was accomplished at 4 pm approximately. The final phase of the manoeuvre involved firing of control engines for a short duration, it said in a statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also announced ISRO’s latest feat, which comes months after the success of Chandrayaan-3 where the challenging soft landing of the spacecraft was achieved on an unexplored part of the lunar surface.

‘Event about only placing Aditya L1 in precise Halo orbit’

Somanath further said Saturday’s event was about only placing the Aditya L1 in the precise Halo orbit. “It was moving towards the Halo orbit but we had to do a little bit of corrections to put it in the right place. So something like a 31 metres per second velocity had to be given cumulatively to the satellite to keep it at the right orientation,” he informed reporters.

The senior scientist mentioned the Halo orbit is that which strikes across the L1 level with a dimension of six lakh km in a single dimension, over two lakh km in one other dimension and one lakh km in yet one more dimension, forming an egg-shaped orbit.

“So on this new orbit, it needed to be positioned very exactly. If you don’t do the correction right this moment then it might escape from this level (L1). We is not going to enable it to flee. There are some contingencies however I’m telling you mathematically it might escape. So it has been performed very exactly,” he mentioned.

He added: “This specific Halo orbit is selected to ensure a mission lifetime of 5 years, minimising station-keeping manoeuvres and, thus, fuel consumption and ensuring a continuous, unobstructed view of the sun.”

Here are the most important science targets of the Aditya L1 mission: