India’s sun-tracking spacecraft has passed a milestone in its path to avoid “Earth’s sphere of influence”, India’s space agency said, days after disappointment over its rover’s failure to wake up. The Aditya-L1 mission, which began its four-month journey towards the center of the solar system on September 2, has the tools to observe the outer layers of the Sun.

“The spacecraft has left Earth’s sphere of influence,” the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said in a statement late on Saturday.

Named after the Hindu sun god, Aditya covered 920,000 kilometers (570,000 miles), just over the total distance. At this point, the gravitational forces of both astronomical bodies balance, allowing the mission to remain in a stable halo orbit around our nearest star.

“This is the second consecutive time that ISRO has been able to send a spacecraft beyond Earth’s sphere of influence, the first being the Mars Orbiter mission,” the agency added.

In August, India became the first country to land a rover near the moon’s little-explored south pole and only the fourth country to land on the moon. The Pragyan rover explored the area around the landing site but was shut down before the start of the lunar night, which lasts about two weeks on Earth.

India had hoped to continue the mission by re-energizing the solar-powered vehicle when daylight returned to the lunar surface, but has so far been met with radio silence.

“It is not a problem if the rover does not wake up as it is doing what is expected of it,” ISRO chief S Somanath said on Wednesday.

In 2014, India became the first Asian country to launch a spacecraft into Mars orbit and plans to launch a three-day crewed mission to Earth orbit next year. The United States and the European Space Agency have sent numerous probes to the center of the Solar System in the 1960s, starting with NASA’s Pioneer program.

Japan and China have launched their own solar observatory missions into Earth orbit. However, if successful, ISRO’s latest mission will be the first among Asian countries to be launched into orbit around the Sun.