By R Anil Kumar
Bengaluru, December 10, 2025. India’s first solar observatory, Aditya-L1, has made a significant contribution to the global scientific effort to understand solar storms, particularly an unusually powerful event that struck Earth in May 2024.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on December 9, that Aditya-L1 joined forces with six US satellites, including NASA’s Wind satellite, enabling researchers to study the solar storm from multiple vantage points simultaneously in space.
This cooperative approach with international missions enhanced the precision and breadth of data available for analysis.
The solar storm in question, now named “Gannon’s storm,” was the strongest to hit Earth in more than two decades. It severely disturbed Earth’s magnetic environment, impacting satellites, communication systems, GPS, and even power grids.
The storm originated from a series of massive explosions on the Sun, technically known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These CMEs consist of gigantic bubbles of hot gas and magnetic energy expelled into space, which can disrupt Earth’s protective magnetic shield when they collide with it.
The recently published study by a team of Indian scientists, featured in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides fresh insight into why this storm behaved so unusually. Normally, a CME carries what scientists describe as a twisted “magnetic rope” that interacts with Earth’s magnetic shield.
However, during this event, two CMEs collided in space and exerted tremendous pressure on each other. This compression caused the magnetic field lines inside one CME to snap and then reconnect in new configurations in a process known as magnetic reconnection.
This magnetic reconnection was pivotal because it caused a sudden reversal in the storm’s magnetic field, intensifying the storm’s impact far beyond previous expectations. The presence of this phenomenon was corroborated by satellite observations, which detected particles accelerating dramatically, a clear signature of energy increases due to reconnection.
Aditya-L1’s key contribution was in providing extremely precise measurements of the magnetic field, allowing scientists to map the reconnection region in unprecedented detail.
The area where the CME’s magnetic field was tearing and reconnecting was colossal—about 1.3 million kilometres across, roughly 100 times the diameter of Earth. This is the first time such a large-scale magnetic breakup and re-joining has been observed inside a CME, marking a breakthrough in solar storm research.
This discovery has important implications for understanding how solar storms evolve as they travel from the Sun to Earth, shedding light on the dynamic and complex interactions involved. It also demonstrates India’s expanding leadership in global space science, highlighting the critical role played by Aditya-L1 in advancing knowledge and predictive capabilities regarding powerful solar storms.
Launched in September 2023, Aditya-L1 is India’s first space-based mission dedicated to studying the Sun.
Its success in this collaborative scientific endeavour marks a notable milestone for both ISRO and the global space science community, strengthening India’s position in monitoring and forecasting space weather phenomena that have direct impacts on modern technological infrastructure on Earth.
