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For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered in orbit last year – can observe the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star emits two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also 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 ever recorded occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature 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 each.

Although these figures seem massive, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The learnings gained will assist in developing protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.