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

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – 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 reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our planetary system, and two, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting millions without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study information gathered from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

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

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

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

"I consider this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard for future comparison assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.