🔗 Share this article Why the Year 2026 Will Be an Unprecedented Year for India's Solar Observation Mission A massive solar eruption can be much bigger than our planet Regarding India's first solar observatory, the year 2026 will be truly unique. This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle. According to research, this occurs roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles swapping positions. It's a time marked by intense activity. It sees our star changing from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer. Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun. "During typical or low-activity times, the Sun launches a few solar eruptions daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more each day." Studying CMEs ranks among the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, because activities occurring on the Sun threaten infrastructure on our planet and in orbit. Northern lights illuminated the darkness across America last autumn Effects on Our Planet and Orbital Systems Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed. "The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, being direct evidence that charged particles from our star journey toward our planet," the expert explains. "However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft malfunction, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft." Past Solar Incidents The strongest solar storm in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems across the globe During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European air hubs Recently in 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost If we are able to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, record its temperature at the source and track its path, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way. The solar atmosphere can be seen when the Moon blocks the Sun from Earth The Mission's Unique Advantage While other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to watching the corona. "Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the researcher. Essentially, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon provide only during specific moments. Moreover, this is the only mission capable of examining eruptions using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction. Readiness for Maximum Activity To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing information obtained from a major CMEs that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now. It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes. At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels with energy equivalent was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each. Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event. The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that. "I consider the CME we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says. "The learnings gained will help us work out protective measures to implement to protect satellites in near space. Additionally, they'll aid achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.