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For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – can watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions observing the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist classifies 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 matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.