🔗 Share this article

For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch our star during the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and is marked by a significant rise in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass of billions of tons and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs a day," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where nearly 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are a clear example that solar particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar event ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to disruption in Sweden and some other European air hubs
• In February 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to see events on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and satellites redirecting them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

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

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures make it sound massive, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he states.

"The learnings from this will help us developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.