India's Sun Mission Provided Important Data

Reports are coming from scientists in India that received the "first significant result" from Aditya-L1, the country’s first solar observation mission in space.

The new learnings, they claimed, could help keep power grids and communication satellites out of harm's way the next time solar activities threatened infrastructure on Earth and space.

On 16 July, the most important of the seven scientific instruments Aditya-L1 is carrying – Visible Emission Line Coronagraph, or Velc – captured data that helped scientists estimate the precise time a coronal mass ejection (CME) began.

Studying CMEs – massive fireballs that blow out of the Sun’s outermost corona layer – is one of the most important scientific objectives of India’s maiden solar mission.

"Made up of charged particles, a CME could weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km [1,864 miles] per second while travelling. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth," says Prof R Ramesh of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics that designed Velc.

"Now imagine this huge fireball hurtling towards Earth. At its top speed, it would take just about 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance."

The coronal ejection that Velc captured on 16 July had started at 13:08 GMT. Prof Ramesh, Velc’s Principal Investigator who has published a paper on this CME in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal Letters, said it originated on the side of the Earth.

"But within half an hour of its journey, it got deflected and went in a different direction, going behind the Sun. As it was too far away, it did not impact Earth’s weather."

But solar storms, solar flares and coronal mass ejections routinely impact Earth's weather. They also impact the space weather where nearly 7,800 satellites, including more than 50 from India, are stationed.

According to Space.com, they rarely pose a direct threat to human life, but they can cause mayhem on Earth by interfering with the Earth’s magnetic field.

Their most benign impact is causing beautiful auroras in places close to the North and South Pole. A stronger coronal mass ejection can cause auroras to show up in skies further away such as in London or France – as it did in May and October.