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

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can watch the Sun 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 would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star changing from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

If we are able to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs carrying power matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The learnings from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.