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

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, causing chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

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

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing protective measures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.