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For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star in the center of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present a direct threat to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, affecting millions in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together to study the data obtained from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

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

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings gained will help us developing protective measures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.