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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

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

As per scientific data, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Although these figures make it sound incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"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 is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.