🔗 Share this article

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

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out toward various directions, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun threaten systems on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms that impact conditions 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 toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study solar events in visible light, letting it determine eruption heat and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing information obtained from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Although the numbers seem incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.