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For India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, causing disruption in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing information gathered from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.