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

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

According to research, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain 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 about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be over ten daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, even during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures seem massive, the scientist classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions carrying power matching greater levels.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in orbit. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.