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For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be like no other.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch our star during its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Events

• The most powerful solar event ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and track its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

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

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, letting it determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale each.

Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard for future comparison to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will assist in developing protective measures to implement to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.