India's space program has nowhere to go but up. And if the latest update from the Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) is anything to base that from, then the nation now finds itself among an elite club of celestial body researchers. ISRO launched the Astrosat, a mini space observatory, and that now orbits 400 miles up from the earth's surface.

The achievement is a big leap forward for the ISRO. Just last year, they sent Mars Orbiter Mission or Mangalyaan into the red planet's orbit. There are only a handful of nations that can claim this distinction: only the US, former Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had that done that previously, Yahoo News reported.

It is worth noting that the successful ISRO mission to Mars also costed only a fraction of the other nations' missions. But so far, the ISRO's successes have been more of a display of technological prowess than anything else even though their contributions to science cannot be overlooked. The Astrosat, however, puts India in a position to advance knowledge like never before, The Guardian reported.

The Astrosat will be studying mysterious parts of the universe including black holes and the magnetic fields of stars. Unlike ground-based labs, the Astrosat does not need to deal with atmospheric interferences. Its position up in orbit gives it the advantage of using its sensors to pick up uninterrupted and unfiltered data from the cosmos, The Indian Express reported.

The Polar satellite vehicle was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India and, besides the 150-ton Astrosat, also launched six other foreign satellites. These satellites belong to Indonesia, Canada, and the US. India has a $1 billion per year budget for its space program and uses the data gathered for everything such as gauging water levels in underground aquifers to predicting storms and floods.