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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space last year – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star changing from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the key scientific objectives 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 our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, knock down power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together analyzing information gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Even though the numbers make it sound massive, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened 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 states.

"The learnings gained will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.