India's solar observation mission has reached the sun's orbit after a four-month journey, the latest achievement for the space exploration ambitions of the world's most populous country.
The Aditya-L1 mission was launched in September and has a suite of instruments to measure and observe the outermost layers of the Sun.
India's Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said on social media that the probe had reached its final orbit “to discover the secrets of the Sun-Earth connection.”
The United States and the European Space Agency have sent numerous probes to the center of the solar system, starting with NASA's Pioneer program in the 1960s. Japan and China have also launched their own solar observatory missions into Earth orbit.
But the Indian Space Research Organization's latest mission is the first by a country in Asia to be placed in orbit around the sun.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi described it as another milestone in the country's space program. “It is a testament to the tireless efforts of our scientists,” he said on social media. “We will continue to pursue new frontiers of science for the benefit of humanity.”
Aditya, named after a Hindu solar deity, is 932,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth – still just 1% of the distance between Earth and the Sun. It is now at a point where the gravitational forces of both celestial bodies cancel out, allowing it to remain in a stable halo orbit around the Sun.
The orbiter, which reportedly cost $48m (£38m), will study coronal mass ejections, a periodic phenomenon in which huge discharges of plasma and magnetic energy are released from the sun's atmosphere. These bursts are so powerful that they can reach Earth and disrupt satellite operations.
The mission also aims to shed light on the dynamics of several other solar phenomena by imaging and measuring particles in the sun's upper atmosphere.
India has a relatively inexpensive space program, but it has grown in size and momentum since it first sent a probe into orbit around the moon in 2008. In August last year, India became the first country to land an unmanned spacecraft near the moon's unexplored south pole and the fourth country to land on the moon.
India became the first Asian country to put a spacecraft into orbit around Mars in 2014 and is expected to launch a three-day crewed mission into Earth's orbit later this year.
India is also planning a joint mission with Japan to send another probe to the Moon by 2025 and an orbital mission to Venus within the next two years.