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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – can observe the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to see events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

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

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights gained will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.