🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space recently – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving millions without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to disruption in Sweden and some other European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship 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 – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Even though 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, we could see CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.