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For Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting millions in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us developing protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.