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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent 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 coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the most important research goals of India's first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the expert explains.

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

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other solar missions observing the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing information 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. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing protective measures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.