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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – can watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles 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 can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist explains.

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

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated analyzing information obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.