Just days after landing its first rover on the Moon, India has successfully launched a mission to our nearest star, the Sun. 

The Aditya-L1 spacecraft blasted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in South India’s Sriharikota at 11.50am local time on Saturday. 

The spacecraft is now headed on a long journey towards the Sun. Over the next four months, Aditya-L1 will cover a distance of 932,000 miles (1.5 million km) to reach its destination: a halo orbit around one of five Lagrangian points. If successful, Aditya-L1 will be the first vessel by any Asian nation to be placed in orbit around the Sun.

This location is a place where the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Earth cancel each other out. It is also expected to allow the Aditya-L1 – named after the Sanskrit word for ‘Sun’ – to study solar activities continuously without any occultation and eclipse. 

“The launch was successful – everything is normal,” announced an official from the Indian Space Research...