🔗 Share this article

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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – can watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the scientist explains.

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

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

If we are able to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and track its trajectory, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

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

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

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

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says.

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