The Reason the Year 2026 Will Be a Year Like No Other for the Indian Solar Observation Mission

Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

As per scientific data, this occurs approximately every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the North and South 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 number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed exceeding 2,000 miles each second. It can head out in any direction, including towards the Earth. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection about half a day to cover the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, our star emits a few solar eruptions daily," explains a leading scientist. "Next year, we expect there will be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions provide an opportunity to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising many from India, orbit.

"The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions include northern lights, which are direct evidence that charged particles from our star are travelling toward our planet," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, knock down power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid was knocked out, affecting millions in darkness for nine hours
• In November 2015, solar storms disrupted air traffic control, causing chaos in Sweden and various European air hubs
• In February 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see events on the Sun's corona and detect a solar storm or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at origin and watch its path, it can work as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

While other space observatories watching the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others regarding watching the corona.

"The instrument has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, fully covering the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

Essentially, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something the real Moon does only during specific moments.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – key clues that show how strong a CME would be if it headed our direction.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for next year's peak solar activity period, researchers collaborated analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale each.

Although these figures seem massive, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one.

The asteroid that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth carried enormous energy and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power matching greater levels.

"I consider the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says.

"The learnings gained will assist in developing protective measures to be adopted to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.