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

For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

It's the first time the observatory – which was placed in orbit recently – can watch the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs approximately every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles swapping positions.

It's a time marked by intense activity. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and is marked by a huge increase in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer.

Composed of charged particles, a coronal mass ejection may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and reach velocities of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward the Earth. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME 15 hours to traverse the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun.

"In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, we expect them to be 10 or more daily."

Studying CMEs is one of the key scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. One, because the ejections offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Effects on Our Planet and Space Infrastructure

Coronal mass ejections rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact life on Earth by causing magnetic disturbances affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, including many from India, are stationed.

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

"However, they may make all the electronics on a satellite fail, knock down electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm ever recorded was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out telegraph lines across the globe
• During 1989, a part of Quebec's power grid failed, affecting millions without power for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, causing chaos across Scandinavia and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, an ejection caused 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to see events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or solar eruption as it happens, record its temperature at origin and watch its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to switch off power grids and satellites redirecting them out of harm's way.

Aditya-L1's Unique Advantage

There are other space observatories observing our star, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals regarding studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions enabling it to nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting continuous observation of nearly the entire of the corona around the clock, throughout the year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher.

In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let scientists continuously observe its faint outer corona – something the real Moon provide only during specific moments.

Moreover, it's unique capable of examining solar events using optical wavelengths, letting it measure a CME's temperature and heat energy – crucial data indicating the intensity a CME would be when traveling toward Earth.

Readiness for Maximum Activity

In preparation for next year's solar maximum, researchers collaborated analyzing the data obtained from one of the largest solar eruption that Aditya-L1 has observed recently.

It originated on 13 September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that sank Titanic weighed much less.

Initially, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much smaller in scale respectively.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the standard that we'll be using assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle arrives," he says.

"The insights from this will help us work out protective measures to be adopted safeguarding satellites in near space. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of our space environment," he concludes.