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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – will be able to watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions daily," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving millions in darkness for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at the source and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing information gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings gained will help us developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.