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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered into space last year – will be able to observe our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability 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 track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does 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 – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information obtained from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.