The Reason 2026 Will Be a Year Like No Other for India's Solar Observation Mission

Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 will be like no other.

It's the first time the spacecraft – that entered into space recently – can watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, it comes roughly every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the planet's poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees the Sun changing from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, our star launches two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the key research goals of India's maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to learn about the star in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

CMEs seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that solar particles from our star journey to Earth," the scientist clarifies.

"But they can also make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, knock down power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Historical Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event that disabled telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, causing disruption across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at the source and track its path, this serves as advanced warning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the researcher.

In other words, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, blocking the Sun's bright surface allowing researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining solar events in visible light, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues that show how strong of an eruption when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated to study information obtained from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons and 21 kilotons respectively.

Although the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event.

The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power equal to even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings from this will assist in work out the countermeasures to be adopted to protect satellites in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.