🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be like no other.

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

As per research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that charged particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar storm in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, causing chaos in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and spot a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together analyzing the data gathered 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 – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers 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 during solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we analyzed to have occurred during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The insights from this will assist in developing protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.