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For India's first solar observatory, 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 scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves our star changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that erupt from the solar corona.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards our planet. At top speed, it would take an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives of India's first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun endanger infrastructure on our planet and in orbit.

Effects on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from Sun journey toward our planet," the scientist explains.

"However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting millions without power for hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disturbed flight operations, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites failing

If we are able to observe events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, record its temperature at the source and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft holds an edge over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat natural eclipses does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – crucial data that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for the upcoming peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

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

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures make it sound incredibly large, the expert classifies it as a moderate event.

The space rock which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content matching greater levels.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison assessing what to expect during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The learnings gained will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.