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Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the key research goals of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

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

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it determine a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing information obtained from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Although these figures seem massive, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.