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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can observe our star during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star emits two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and affect 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
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study information gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

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

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content matching greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.