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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit last year – will be able to observe our star during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, disable power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• In 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting millions without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

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

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

Essentially, this instrument acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

It originated 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, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures make it sound massive, the expert describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

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

"The learnings from this will help us work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.