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For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – can observe the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period 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 eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting millions in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

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

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. 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 assist in developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.