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Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – can observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

As per research, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

This period marked by intense activity. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a huge increase in the number of solar storms and massive solar flares – enormous clouds of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed 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 top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "In 2026, we expect there will be over ten daily."

Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure

CMEs rarely pose a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing geomagnetic storms that impact the weather in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, being direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Incidents

• The strongest solar event ever recorded occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to observe events in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at origin and track its path, it can work as a forewarning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them to safety.

The Mission's Special Capability

There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during solar events," says the researcher.

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

Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and heat energy – crucial data indicating how strong a CME would be when traveling our direction.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information gathered from one of the largest CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller and 21 kilotons respectively.

Even though these figures seem massive, the scientist describes 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 eruptions carrying power equal to greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The learnings gained will help us developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.