ISRO releases selfie and images of Earth and Moon taken by India’s solar mission Aditya L1

India’s maiden mission to study the Sun, Aditya L1 has taken images of itself as well as the Earth and the Moon from the highly elliptical orbit around the Earth where it is currently present. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released selfie and images by the Aditya-L1 destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point. The video posted by the ISRO shows an image of a portion of the spacecraft captured by its onboard camera. It shows the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph that will study the solar corona. The video also showed the image of one hemisphere of Earth illuminated by sunlight as well as a tiny white speck that the space agency had to point out was the Moon. 

The spacecraft is currently undergoing a series of manoeuvres to raise its orbit as well as velocity till it can finally be slingshot towards the Sun.Once injected into the path towards the Sun, the spacecraft will take nearly four months to travel the 1.5 million kilometre distance to the L1 point that provides an unobstructed 24×7 view of the Sun.