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Regarding India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh 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, it would take a CME about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be over ten each day."

Researching CMEs is one of the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the star in the center of our solar system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, knock down electrical networks and disrupt weather and communication satellites."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites failing

With capability to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and spacecraft and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others when it comes to watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it continuous observation of almost all of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, even during solar events," says the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing the data gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, its temperature was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

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

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of near-Earth space," he concludes.