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For Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Even though these figures make it sound massive, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement to protect spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.