New Delhi, 2 September 2023 (dpa/MIA) - India has launched a mission to study the sun, with the Aditya-L1 rocket blasting off from the Satish Dhawan spaceport in Andhra Pradesh just before midday on Saturday.

The launch went normally, the space agency said in a live transmission that comes just a week after India successfully landed a moon probe.

Saturday's rocket - named after the Hindu god of the sun - is expected to travel for about four months, reaching an orbit around the sun in about 125 days, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, a spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said ahead of the launch.

If successful, the Aditya-L1 would gain an uninterrupted view of the sun, without darkness.

At 1,475 kilograms, Aditya-L1 is lighter than India's Chandrayaan-3, the lunar rover.

It is being launched by a rocket into the Earth's orbit and then will head towards the sun.

The satellite's cargo will be used to analyse the outermost layers of the sun, focusing specifically on solar activities such as wind acceleration and flares.

The data on solar phenomena that India wants to collect should help to better understand the weather on Earth as well as on other planets. They will also help better protect communication and climate satellites around the Earth, the ISRO spokesperson said.

India's mission is expected to last a little more than five years.

The United States, China, Europe and Japan have also sent missions to study the sun, alone or in joint missions.

Photo: EPA