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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately 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 involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data 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 was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Even though these figures seem massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.