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

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards our planet. At top speed, it would take an ejection about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, disable electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight 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 – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons each.

Although these figures make it sound massive, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power equal to even more than that.

"I consider the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.