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Regarding India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

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

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits two to three CMEs daily," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting millions without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, this serves as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, 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 solar events," says the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing information obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

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