For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique.
This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit last year – will be able to observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.
As per scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles changing places.
This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing 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 plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.
Made up of charged particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.
"During typical or low-activity times, our star emits two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more daily."
Studying CMEs ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.
Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.
"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are a clear example that solar particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies.
"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."
If we are able to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect solar activity or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its path, this serves as advanced warning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.
There are other solar missions watching our star, 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 the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the expert.
In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments.
Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.
To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.
This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.
At origin, 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 the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist classifies it as a moderate event.
The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content matching even more than that.
"I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he states.
"The learnings gained will assist in developing protective measures to be adopted to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.
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