ISRO chief S Somanath reveals time & date of Aditya-L1's arrival at the Lagrange point

The Aditya L1 observatory will reach the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system on January 6, ISRO chief S Somanath said on Thursday.

Launched in September this year, the observatory will arrive at its destination at 4 pm, he further revealed. 

"Aditya L1 is almost there now. Aditya L1 will reach Lagrange point on January 6 at 4 pm. We will have a very controlled burn of the engine of Aditya L1 so that it enters an orbit called the halo orbit," Somanath said at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay's annual science and technology event ‘Techfest 2023’. 

The ISRO chief explained that the Lagrange point is a region where gravity between the Earth and the Sun will neutralise. “Absolute neutralisation is not possible because there are other bodies like the Moon, Mars, Venus,” he said. This unique location will enable the spacecraft to view the Sun without any eclipses.

Divulging more details about the mission, Somanath said that all six payloads have been tested and "working beautifully", adding all are giving very good data.

"After the insertion the satellite will be destined to look at the Sun forever as long as its electronics inside are healthy and ready to transmit data. We hope to find out a lot of correlation between the solar corona and mass ejection and impact on space weather we are facing everyday," Somanath added.

Speaking about the historic Chandrayaan-3 mission, Somanath said after 14 days of its contribution of collecting data, the Pragyan rover is "sleeping very well" on the lunar surface.

"It is sleeping forever in history. Unfortunately, we were hoping it would wake up, but it did not happen. When we tested the whole system in our laboratory, it was working," he said.

He said that some systems that worked in the laboratory may not work on the lunar surface due to various reasons like radiation.