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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

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

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers worked together to study the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us developing protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.