🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – can observe the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, 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 emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface threaten systems on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he states.

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