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For Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to observe our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star at the centre of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

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

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and track its trajectory, 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 solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

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

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers collaborated to study the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Even though these figures seem massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

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 even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.