🔗 Share this article Why the Year 2026 Will Be a Year Like No Other for India's Solar Observation Mission A coronal mass ejection is much bigger than our planet For Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique. This marks the initial occasion the observatory – that entered into space recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle. According to scientific data, it comes approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario could be the North and South poles changing places. It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer. Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass of billions of tons and reach velocities exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance. "In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions a day," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more daily." Studying coronal mass ejections ranks among the key research goals for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the Sun at the centre of our planetary system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the Sun endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space. Northern lights lit up the night sky across America last autumn Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure CMEs seldom present a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating magnetic disturbances affecting the weather in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including Indian satellites, are stationed. "The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are direct evidence that charged particles from Sun journey to Earth," the expert explains. "But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft." Historical Solar Incidents The strongest solar event in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving millions in darkness for nine hours During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports In February 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing If we are able to see what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety. The Sun's corona is only visible during a total solar eclipse from our perspective Aditya-L1's Special Capability There are other space observatories watching our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona. "Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic lunar coverage, fully covering the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of nearly the entire solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher. In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists constantly study its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses. Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed our direction. Readiness for Peak Period To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together analyzing the data obtained from a major solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently. It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes. Initially, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each. Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one. The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and when solar peak occurs, there may be eruptions with energy content matching even more than that. "I consider this eruption we analyzed to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says. "The learnings gained will help us developing protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he adds.