🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit last year – will be able to watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places.

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

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun threaten systems on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert explains.

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

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, 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. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

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

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will help us developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.