🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can observe the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the star at the centre of our planetary system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions watching our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the expert.

Essentially, this instrument acts like an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, researchers worked together to study the data obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

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

At origin, the heat 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 much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

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

The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will help us developing protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.