The Aditya-L1 spacecraft from India, which was launched on the nation's first mission to study the sun, has now completed its first Orbit Raising Manoeuvre (fired its onboard engines to propel itself farther from Earth). In the early afternoon of September 2nd, a PSLV-XL rocket launched the probe into an elliptical (egg-shaped) orbit around the planet.
Meanwhile, the Indian moon probe Chandrayaan-3 is being 'put to sleep' near the Lunar South Pole, as the Lunar night (fortnight-long on earth) fast approaches.
"Aditya-L1 Mission: The satellite is healthy and operating nominally. The first Earth-bound manoeuvre (EBN#1) is performed successfully from ISTRAC, Bengaluru. The new orbit attained is 245km x 22459 km. The next maneuvre (EBN#2) is scheduled for September 5, 2023, around 03:00 Hrs. IST" ISRO said on X, formerly known as Twitter on September 3rd.
Aditya-L1 is a mission to study the solar, although it would barely cover 1% of the distance between the Earth and the solar, in contrast to NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which has travelled a few million kilometres near the Sun.
India tries waking up Chandrayaan-3 moon lander
Engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have started making attempts to awaken the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander and rover from their two-week hibernation. On September 22, ISRO said in a post on X, that it has made attempts "to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition."
So far, the engineers haven't heard back from the iconic duo, the first two human-made objects to land in the moon's south polar region.