🔗 Share this article

For India's first solar observatory, 2026 is expected to be like no other.

It's the first time the observatory – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to observe the Sun when it reaches its maximum activity cycle.

According to research, this occurs roughly once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – the Earth equivalent could be the North and South poles changing places.

It's a time of great turbulence. It sees our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the frequency of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of fire that erupt 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 head out in any direction, including towards our planet. At maximum velocity, it would take an ejection 15 hours to cover the vast distance Earth-Sun distance.

"During typical or quiet periods, our star launches a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections provide an opportunity to study the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and two, since events occurring on the Sun endanger systems on our planet and in orbit.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to human life, but they do affect life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, comprising Indian satellites, orbit.

"The most spectacular displays from solar eruptions are auroras, being a clear example that charged particles from our star journey toward our planet," the scientist explains.

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

Historical Solar Incidents

• The most powerful solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event which knocked out telegraph lines worldwide
• During 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network failed, leaving six million people in darkness for hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disturbed flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European airports
• Recently in 2022, a CME caused dozens of spacecraft failing

With capability to see what happens in the solar atmosphere and spot a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, this serves as advanced warning to switch off electrical systems and satellites and move them to safety.

Aditya-L1's Special Capability

There are other solar missions watching the Sun, India's spacecraft has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk permitting an uninterrupted view of almost all solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, throughout the year, even during solar events," notes the expert.

In other words, this instrument functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the solar glare to let researchers constantly study its faint outer corona – a feat the real Moon does only during eclipses.

Moreover, this is the only mission that can study eruptions in visible light, enabling it to determine a CME's temperature and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity a CME would be if it headed toward Earth.

Readiness for Peak Period

To prepare for the upcoming solar maximum, scientists worked together analyzing the data gathered from one of the largest solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now.

It originated in September 2024 during early hours. Its mass totaled billions of tons – for comparison that sank Titanic weighed much less.

At origin, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius and the energy content was equivalent to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – in comparison nuclear weapons used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale each.

Even though these figures seem incredibly large, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated prehistoric life on Earth was 100 million megatons and during the Sun's maximum activity cycle, we could see CMEs carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view this eruption we evaluated happened during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum occurs," he states.

"The learnings gained will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement safeguarding spacecraft in near space. They will also help achieving a better understanding of our space environment," he concludes.