ISRO's Aditya- L1 Satellite Has A Date With The Sun

Aditya's home is in a halo-shaped orbit, some 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth.

India's "celestial surya namaskar" is about to reach its climax. India's first space-based solar observatory -- the Aditya-L1 satellite -- is going to check-in to the home it is likely to occupy for the next five years. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) says the satellite will reach its destination orbit on January 6 at 4 pm.

In its 126-day journey that began on September 2 last year, it has traversed about 3.7 million kilometers as it went about a circuitous route to reach its "karambhoomi" or "land of action". ISRO says Aditya is healthy and scientific results have already started flowing in as it has beamed back beautiful images of the full disc of the Sun.

Aditya's home is in a halo-shaped orbit, some 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. Although closer to the Sun than the Earth, the orbit will still be far, far away, since the Sun is some 150 million kilometers away from us.

From its final vantage point which is called the Lagrangian Point-1, the 1,475 kilogram Aditya-L1 satellite will conduct scientific experiments to better understand the star of our solar system, which remains an enigma.