🔗 Share this article

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

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space last year – can watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards our planet. At top speed, it would take an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs with energy content equal to greater levels.

"In my view the CME we analyzed happened during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The learnings from this will help us work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.