ISRO’s Aditya-L1 gets ringside view of massive solar storm; Chandrayaan-2 watches from Moon’s orbit

CHENNAI: As a massive solar storm erupted from the face of the Sun, the most intense storm in 21 years, there was an ‘Indian’ who witnessed it live and up-close while another looked on from afar.

Aditya-L1, the first solar observatory sent by India in September 2023, had the view of the storm from a vantage point that few could boast of. Not very far away – relatively speaking, of course – was Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, which joined its Indian ‘colleague’ to record the spectacle in space.

The Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX) payload on-board showed high-speed solar wind, high-temperature solar wind plasma and energetic ion flux till now, the Indian space agency said on Tuesday.

“While the Aditya-L1 observes the Sun from the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point, the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has also captured the signatures of these solar eruptive events from the lunar polar orbit. XSM [which primarily observes solar x-rays] has observed many interesting phenomena associated with this geomagnetic storm,” said ISRO.

This was the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2003 in terms of its strength, as the flaring region on the Sun was as big as the historically important Carrington event that took place in 1859, the agency added.

The space agency said that the Indian sector was less affected as the main event of the storm happened in the early morning of May 11, when the ionosphere had not developed fully. Also, being at lower latitudes, widespread outages haven't been reported in India.

The Ionosphere was very turbulent over the Pacific and American sectors, ISRO said. The Ionosphere is part of the Earth's upper atmosphere, between 80 and about 600 km where extreme ultraviolet and x-ray solar radiation ionises the atoms and molecules, thus creating a layer of electrons.

The ionosphere is important because it reflects and modifies radio waves used for communication and navigation.

(With inputs from agencies)