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For Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered into space last year – will be able to watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

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

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

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to disruption in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together to study information gathered from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The learnings gained will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.