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Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to watch the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

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

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten systems on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions 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 scientist clarifies.

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite malfunction, disable electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• In 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disturbed air traffic control, leading to chaos across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to shut down electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers worked together to study information gathered from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard for future comparison to evaluate what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he says.

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