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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

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

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing the data obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent 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 seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.