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

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, this occurs approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches two to three CMEs a day," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

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 secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, disable power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at origin and track its path, this serves as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions observing 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 lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers worked together to study the data gathered from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

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

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights gained will help us work out protective measures to implement safeguarding satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.