🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

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

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its path, it can work as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions watching our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in developing protective measures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.