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In a significant milestone for India’s space exploration, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) successfully launched its first solar observatory mission dedicated to studying the Sun, Aditya-L1, on Saturday.
India’s first sun mission aims to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on Earth commonly seen as auroras.
The launch took place at 11:50 a.m. IST from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The spacecraft separated from the fourth stage of the rocket nearly an hour after launch, making it one of the longest missions of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
The Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to travel about 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) over four months to a kind of parking lot in space where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.
