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Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

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

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours 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 daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to disruption in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 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 origin and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated analyzing information gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist 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, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

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