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For Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers worked together to study information gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

Even though the numbers make it sound massive, 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, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights gained will help us developing the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.