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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing the data obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.