India Launches Its First Solar Mission

 The goal is to study the sun’s outer layers, to better understand its physics and dynamics and to improve understanding of space weather.People watching as a rocket carrying the Aditya L1 spacecraft, India’s first space-based observatory to study the sun, is launched on Saturday.

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A little over a week after successfully landing a rover on the moon, India on Saturday launched its first solar mission aimed at studying the outer layers of the sun.

Aditya L1, as the mission is called, weighs about 3,300 pounds and will travel a distance of about 930,000 miles over four months. It is then to continue orbiting for several years, all the while sending data back to Earth.

The spacecraft is designed to study the sun’s outer layers, its chromosphere and corona, to better understand the physics and dynamics of our local star.

“I am extremely happy that Aditya L1 is injected into the intended orbit flawlessly,” Nigar Shaji, the project’s director, said after the successful launch.

Ms. Shaji, calling the mission an asset to the “heliophysics of the country and the global scientific fraternity,” said the spacecraft would now continue “its 125 days of long journey towards L1.

A large crowd, including children in school uniforms, watched the rocket’s launch in the noon heat from the viewing gallery of the Satish Dhawan Space Center, the launch facility in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Many of them were carrying colorful umbrellas to protect from the sun.

Last month, India became the fourth country to land on the moon, and the first to do so on its southern polar region, with its Chandrayaan 3 spacecraft. It was the nation’s second try at a moon landing, after its Chadrayaan 2 craft crashed in 2019, and came just days after a Russian lander, also aiming for the southern polar region, had crashed.

The recent successes of India’s space program parallel the nation’s growth as an economic and geopolitical power, and officials cite them as a manifestation of its strong traditions in science and technology. India’s space research agency, called ISRO, has accomplished its goals on a budget much smaller than that of many other space-faring countries.

India’s solar mission is the latest in a string of probes of the sun; some by NASA, both individually and in cooperation with the European space agency, and others by China and Japan.

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