Today is historic day for India in space exploration as India's first polarisation Aditya-L1 completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point, ISRO said.

Inserted on January 6, 2024, it took 178 days, to complete a revolution.

The space agency said its station-keeping manoeuvre on Tuesday ensured its seamless transition into the second halo orbit.

During its travel in the halo orbit, Aditya-L1 spacecraft will be subjected to various perturbing forces that will cause it to depart from the targeted orbit, the space agency said.

“Aditya-L1 underwent two station-keeping manoeuvres on February 22 and June 7, respectively, to maintain this orbit. Today’s third station-keeping manoeuvre has ensured that its travel continued in the second halo orbit path around L1,” ISRO said.

The agency explained that Aditya L1’s journey around Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point involves modeling of complex dynamics.

The understanding of various perturbing forces acting on the spacecraft helped in determining the trajectory accurately and planning precise orbit manoeuvres, it added.

“With today’s manoeuvre, the state-of-the-art flight dynamics software developed in-house at URSC-ISRO for the Aditya-L1 missions stands fully validated,” ISRO said.