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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to observe our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

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

This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions 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 reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study the data gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.