Indian Space Research Organisation said on Thursday that its mission to sun has sent first picture of Earth and the Moon.

The Aditya L1 mission, which was launched on September 2, forwarded the picture when it headed to its destination Lagrangian Point (L1) which was 1.5 million km away from the earth.

Indian media quoted a Bengaluru-based national agency which said: “Aditya-L1, destined for the Sun-Earth L1 point, takes a selfie and images of the Earth and the Moon.”

L1 stands for Lagrange Point 1 - the exact place between the Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading.

The images show VELC (Visible Emission Line Coronagraph) and SUIT (Solar Ultraviolet Imager) instruments as seen by the camera onboard Aditya-L1 on September 4, 2023, reported NDTV.

However, the spacecraft already has finished two earth-bound orbital rotations and will perform two more before placing in the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1.

Aditya-L1 is expected to arrive at the intended orbit at the L1 point after 125 days. It carried seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona.

India named its mission after Surya - as Hindus believed that he was the god of the sun named Aditya.

Japan was the first to launch a mission in 1981 to study solar flares and the US space agency Nasa and European Space Agency (ESA) have been watching the Sun since the 1990s.

In 2021, NASA’s newest spacecraft Parker Solar Probe made history by becoming the first to fly through corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun.