Following quickly on the success of India’s moon landing, the country’s space agency launched a rocket on Saturday to study the sun in its first solar mission.
The rocket left a trail of smoke and fire as scientists clapped, a live broadcast from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) showed.
The broadcast was watched by more than 860,000 viewers, while thousands gathered at a viewing gallery near the launch site to see the lift-off of the probe, which will aim to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on Earth commonly seen as auroras.
Named after the Hindi word for the sun, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft took flight barely a week after India beat Russia to become the first country to land on the south pole of the moon.
