Why the Year 2026 Is Set to Be an Unprecedented Year for India's Sun Mission

Regarding Aditya-L1, the year 2026 will be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed into space recently – can watch the Sun during its maximum activity cycle.

According to scientific data, this occurs roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

This period of great turbulence. It sees the Sun transition from peaceful to violent and features a huge increase in the frequency of solar storms and massive solar flares – massive bubbles of fire that blow out from the solar corona.

Made up of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and reach a speed of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards our planet. At top speed, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the vast distance between Earth and the Sun.

"During typical or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the star in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events occurring on the solar surface endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms that impact conditions in near space, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

"The most beautiful manifestations of a CME are auroras, being direct evidence that solar particles from our star are travelling to Earth," the expert explains.

"But they can also cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, disable power grids and affect weather and communication satellites."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving millions in darkness for hours
• In November 2015, solar activity disrupted air traffic control, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, a CME had led to dozens of spacecraft being lost

With capability to observe what happens in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

While other solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"The instrument is the exact size enabling it to effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, blocking the Sun's bright surface to let researchers continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, this is the only mission that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Maximum Activity

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing information gathered from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has recorded until now.

This event began in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

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

The asteroid that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"I consider this eruption we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. This establishes the benchmark for future comparison assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says.

"The insights from this will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help achieving deeper knowledge of our space environment," he adds.