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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It involves our star changing from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take a CME 15 hours to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions a day," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections is one of the most important scientific objectives of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on Earth and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME are auroras, being a clear example that solar particles from our star journey toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

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

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar event in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems across the globe
• In 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues that show the intensity of an eruption if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons used in Japan were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we analyzed happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard for future comparison to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out protective measures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.