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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could 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 huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

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, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Although these figures make it sound massive, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.