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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, this occurs approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches two to three CMEs a day," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events occurring on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, yet they impact our planet through generating magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME include northern lights, being direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist explains.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites redirecting them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

Although the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to greater levels.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.