India's Aditya-L1 spacecraft successfully escapes sphere of Earth's influence

ISRO said on September 30 the Aditya-L1 spacecraft has travelled beyond a distance of 9.2 lakh km from Earth, successfully escaping the sphere of Earth's influence. It is now navigating its path towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), the Bengaluru-headquartered national space agency said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

"This is the second time in succession that ISRO could send a spacecraft outside the sphere of influence of the Earth, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission," it said. The ISRO said earlier this month the Aditya-L1 solar mission spacecraft has commenced collecting data which will help scientists analyse the behaviour of particles surrounding Earth.

Data collected around L1 would provide insights into the origin, acceleration, and anisotropy of solar wind and space weather phenomena, it said. The launch of Aditya-L1 by PSLV-C57 rocket was successfully accomplished by ISRO on September 2.