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

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs a day," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

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

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing the data gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures seem massive, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

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