India’s Aditya-L1 Teams Up With Europe to Uncover the Sun’s Secrets

India’s space programme has achieved an important scientific milestone as researchers combine observations from India’s Aditya-L1 mission and Europe’s Proba-3 spacecraft to understand powerful eruptions from the Sun. The findings were reported on October 16, 2026, marking the first joint analysis of the same solar eruptions observed by both missions.

The research team from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, combined data from Aditya-L1’s Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and Proba-3’s ASPIICS instrument. Scientists studied two solar eruptions recorded on September 14 and 16, 2025, measuring their mass, density and energy close to the Sun. These eruptions are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which send huge quantities of magnetised plasma into space.

Why does this matter? When a powerful solar eruption is directed towards Earth, it can disturb the planet’s space environment, trigger geomagnetic storms and affect satellites, navigation and communication systems. Studying how these eruptions develop could help scientists improve their understanding of space weather and, eventually, forecasting capabilities.

The achievement also demonstrates the value of international scientific cooperation. By combining observations from two different instruments, researchers can examine solar events in ways that a single spacecraft may not be able to achieve alone. The study has been published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

India’s Aditya-L1 is therefore contributing not only to national space research but also to a broader global effort to understand the Sun. While better forecasting will require further research, this collaboration is an encouraging step towards protecting the technology that modern life increasingly depends on.