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For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated analyzing information gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Even though these figures make it sound massive, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights gained will help us work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.