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

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

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up 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 toward various directions, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present a direct threat to human life, yet they impact life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

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 reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights gained will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.