India’s maiden mission to the Sun, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, has successfully completed its third earth-bound manoeuvre. The firing of the spacecraft occurred at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Telemetry, Tracking, and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru, raising the satellite’s orbit to 296 x 71,767 km.

During the operation, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft was tracked in Mauritius, Bengaluru, and Port Blair. The next manoeuvre, EBN#4, is scheduled for September 15, 2023, and is expected to be the final crucial manoeuvre before the spacecraft is directed towards the Sun’s Lagrange Point 1.

Aditya-L1 will embark on a 125-day space journey before it begins its experiments using its seven homegrown payloads from the halo. The spacecraft was launched on September 2 via ISRO’s PSLV-C57 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.