Aditya-L1 takes a selfie! ISRO shares images of Earth and the Moon taken by Aditya-L1

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday shared images of the Earth and the Moon taken from the camera onboard the Aditya-L1 on September 4.

"Aditya-L1,  destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point,  takes a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon," said ISRO in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Previously, on Tuesday (September 5), ISRO said that the second Earth-bound manoeuvre of Aditya-L1 was successfully performed, and the operation was executed from the Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru. Its first Earth-bound manoeuvre was performed on Sunday (September 3).

ISRO shared this update of the second Earth-bound manoeuvre on the microblogging platform X and wrote, “The second Earth-bound maneuvre (EBN#2) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. ISTRAC/ISRO's ground stations at Mauritius, Bengaluru and Port Blair tracked the satellite during this operation. The new orbit attained is 282 km x 40225 km. The next maneuvre (EBN#3) is scheduled for September 10, 2023, around 02:30 Hrs. IST, (sic).” 

ISRO on Saturday (September 2) launched the first-ever space-based mission to study the Sun from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota,  Andhra Pradesh. The Indian Space Agency said the vehicle placed the satellite precisely into its intended orbit. India's first solar observatory has begun its journey to the destination of Sun-Earth L1 point.

The Aditya L-1 spacecraft will be placed into a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, located approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. The main benefit of having a satellite in the halo orbit around the L1 point is that it can observe the Sun continually without being hampered by eclipses. 

"This will provide a greater advantage of observing the solar activities and its effect on space weather in real-time," said ISRO.

This launch was done days after ISRO executed a successful soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the south pole of the lunar surface on August 23. In the last update of the Chandrayaan-3 mission shared by ISRO on September 4, the space agency said, “Vikram Lander is set into sleep mode around 08:00 Hrs. IST today. Prior to that, in-situ experiments by ChaSTE, RAMBHA-LP and ILSA payloads are performed at the new location. The data collected is received at the Earth.  Payloads are now switched off. Lander receivers are kept ON. Vikram will fall asleep next to Pragyan once the solar power is depleted and the battery is drained. Hoping for their awakening, around September 22, 2023.”