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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection 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 spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing information obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.