Chennai: In a significant breakthrough, ISRO's first solar mission Aditya-L1 satellite has captured the Signatures of the Recent Solar Eruptive events from Earth, Sun-Earth L1 Point, and the Moon.
This is the biggest geo-magnetic storm since 2003 in terms of strength, ISRO said on Tuesday night.
In a social media post, the Space Agency said "ISRO Captures the Signatures of the Recent Solar Eruptive Events from Earth, Sun-Earth L1 Point, and the Moon".
Later, in an update in its website, ISRO said a powerful solar storm impacted Earth in early May 2024, triggered by the highly active region AR13664.
This region unleashed a series of X-class flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) directed at Earth.
The resulting geomagnetic storm was the most intense since 2003 (Dst index -412 nT), causing disruptions to communication and GPS systems.
There have been many M-class and C-class flares as well. Many of these flares were accompanied with halo CMEs (CMEs that are the one which are directed towards Earth) with high energy particles which are behind the geomagnetic storms observed on early hours of May 11, 2024.
The Geomagnetic storm index (Kp) touched 9 (which is maximum) and Very strong X-class flare (X 5.8) was recorded.Solar flares are bursts of energy triggered by magnetic reconnection, classified by letter (B-X) with each letter signifying a tenfold increase in power. X-class flares are the most powerful (peak flux range > 10−4 Wm-2), which can trigger major disruptions.
The next lower level of flares, the M class, represents the peak flux range of 10−5 – 10−4 Wm-2.
The Adtiya-L1 spacecraft was launched on September 2, 2023 using ISRO's workhorse launch vehicle PSLV-C57 from the Second Launch Pad from the spaceport of Sriharikota.
After a flight duration of 63 minutes and 20 seconds, Aditya-L1 spacecraft was successfully injected into an elliptical orbit of 235x19500 km around the Earth.
Aditya-L1 is the first Indian space based observatory to study the Sun from a halo orbit around first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from earth.
Aditya-L1 spacecraft underwent four earth-bound orbital maneuvers after which it had placed in the transfer orbit towards the Lagrange point L1. Aditya-L1 arrived the intended orbit at the L1 point after about 127 days.
Aditya-L1 carried seven scientific payloads indigenously developed by ISRO and national research laboratories including Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru and Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune.
Multiple X-class flares and CMEs have hit the earth in the past few days. This had severe effects over high latitudes where trans-polar flights are already being reported to get diverted.
More events are expected in the next few days.
ISRO said Indian sector got less affected as the main hit of the storm happened in the early morning of May 11, when ionosphere has not developed fully. Also, being at lower latitudes, widespread outages haven't been reported in India.Ionosphere was very turbulent over the Pacific and American sectors.
