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For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered into space last year – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up 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 in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft malfunction, disable power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at the source and watch its path, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together analyzing information gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

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

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs with energy content equal to greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.