🔗 Share this article

Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," explains a leading scientist. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist explains.

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

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

While other space observatories observing the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Although these figures make it sound massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

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