Aditya-L1 Takes Off, Sunny Days Ahead For India In Space

Aditya-L1 is India's first solar space observatory mission.

Days after scripting history by becoming the only nation to achieve a successful soft landing near the south pole of the moon, India added another feather to its space exploration cap on Saturday with the launch of the Aditya-L1 mission. 

India's first solar space observatory mission has been launched on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) XL from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The separation of Aditya-L1 is expected to take about 63 minutes. 

Aditya-L1 will be placed in the halo orbit around Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the sun-earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from Earth. The journey to L1 will take 125 days.