🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – can watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – 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 up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing information obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

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

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he states.

"The learnings gained will help us developing protective measures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.