🔗 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 in orbit recently – can observe our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately once every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees our star changing from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten systems on our planet and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they do affect life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular manifestations from solar eruptions are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting six million people without power for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, it can work as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic 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 solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Even though these figures make it sound incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to implement to protect satellites in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.