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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – will be able to observe the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the key research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

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

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

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

Although these figures seem massive, the scientist classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights gained will help us work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.