🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – can observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, it comes roughly every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting millions without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, fully covering the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study the data obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature 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 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons each.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power matching greater levels.

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

"The insights from this will help us developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.