🔗 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 – that entered in orbit recently – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star changing from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain a speed exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

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

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to disruption in Sweden and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique that can study eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study the data obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Although these figures seem massive, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, we could see eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.