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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – will be able to watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately 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 involves our star transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km 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 cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key 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 occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms 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 charged particles from our star journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability 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 track its path, it can work as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, it's unique that can study solar events in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission 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 was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard for future comparison assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.