ISRO’s Aditya-L1 Mission to Observe the Sun from the Centre of the Solar System

India’s Sun-monitoring spacecraft, the Aditya-L1 mission, has reached a significant milestone in its journey to break free from Earth’s gravitational pull, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). This comes shortly after the disappointment of the Moon rover’s failure to reactivate. Launched on September 2, the Aditya-L1 mission aims to study the Sun’s outer layers and has now successfully left Earth’s influence, as confirmed by ISRO in a statement on Saturday.

Aditya, named after the Hindu sun god, has covered 920,000 kilometers (570,000 miles), just over half of the total distance.

At that point, the gravitational forces of both astronomical bodies cancel out, allowing the mission to remain in a stable halo orbit around our nearest star.

“This is the second consecutive time that ISRO is able to send a spacecraft beyond the Earth’s sphere of influence, the first time being the Mars Orbiter Mission,” the agency added.

In August, India became the first country to land a craft near the moon’s largely unexplored south pole, and only the fourth nation to land on the moon.

The rover Pragyan probed the vicinity of its landing site, but it lost power before the start of the lunar night, which lasts about two weeks on Earth.

India had hoped to extend the mission by reactivating the solar-powered vehicle once daylight returned to the lunar surface, but so far it has been greeted by radio silence.

“It’s OK if it doesn’t wake up because the rover has done what it was expected to do,” ISRO chief S. Somanath said on Wednesday.

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to put a craft into Mars orbit and is set to launch a three-day crewed mission to Earth orbit next year.

The United States and the European Space Agency have sent numerous probes into the center of the solar system, starting with NASA’s Pioneer program in the 1960s.

Japan and China have both launched their own solar observatory missions into Earth orbit.

But if it succeeds, ISRO’s latest mission will be the first from an Asian country to be placed in solar orbit.