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For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit last year – can observe our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing disruption in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions observing the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated analyzing the data obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Although these figures make it sound incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The insights gained will help us developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.