🔗 Share this article

Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit last year – can observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert explains.

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

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated to study the data obtained from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

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

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us developing protective measures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.