🔗 Share this article Why the Year 2026 Will Be a Year Like No Other for the Indian Sun Mission A massive solar eruption is much bigger than Earth Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be truly unique. It's the first time the spacecraft – which was placed into space recently – will be able to watch our star when it reaches the peak of its solar cycle. As per scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent would be the planet's poles changing places. This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun changing from calm to stormy and is marked by a significant rise in the frequency of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that erupt from the solar corona. Composed of charged particles, a CME can weigh up to a trillion kilograms and can attain velocities of up to 3,000km each second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance. "During typical or low-activity times, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect them to be over ten daily." Researching CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the Sun threaten infrastructure on Earth and in space. Northern lights illuminated the night sky across America last autumn Impacts on Earth and Space Infrastructure Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, but they do affect our planet by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed. "The most beautiful displays from solar eruptions are auroras, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun journey to Earth," the scientist explains. "However, they may cause electronic systems aboard spacecraft fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft." Past Solar Incidents The most powerful solar storm in history occurred during the 1859 solar superstorm that disabled communication systems worldwide During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting millions in darkness for hours During late 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, causing disruption across Scandinavia and various European air hubs Recently in 2022, a CME caused 38 commercial satellites being lost If we are able to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot solar activity or a coronal mass ejection as it happens, measure its heat at origin and track its path, this serves as a forewarning to shut down power grids and spacecraft and move them to safety. The Sun's corona can be seen when the Moon blocks the Sun from Earth The Mission's Special Capability There are other solar missions watching our star, Aditya-L1 holds an edge compared to rivals regarding watching the corona. "Aditya-L1's coronagraph is the exact size enabling it to nearly mimic lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire of the corona 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, even during solar events," says the expert. Essentially, this instrument functions as an artificial Moon, obscuring the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – something natural eclipses does only during specific moments. Additionally, 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 indicating how strong of an eruption when traveling our direction. Preparation for Peak Period To prepare for the upcoming peak solar activity period, scientists worked together to study information obtained from a major CMEs recorded by the mission has recorded until now. It originated on 13 September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes. Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of TNT – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale respectively. Even though these figures make it sound incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a moderate event. The space rock which wiped out prehistoric life on our planet carried enormous energy and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions with energy content equal to even more than that. "I consider the CME we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the benchmark that we'll be using assessing what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he says. "The insights from this will help us work out the countermeasures to be adopted safeguarding spacecraft in near space. Additionally, they'll aid us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.