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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs roughly every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be over ten each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – 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 measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

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

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out protective measures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.