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

This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered into space recently – will be able to observe our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact conditions in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event in history was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe 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 trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, it's unique that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

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

Although these figures make it sound incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions with energy content equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to implement safeguarding satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.