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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit last year – will be able to watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting 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
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information gathered from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission 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.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Although these figures seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will help us developing the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.