🔗 Share this article Why 2026 Will Be an Unprecedented Year for India's Solar Observation Mission A massive solar eruption is several times larger than Earth Regarding India's first solar observatory, 2026 will be truly unique. This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – which was placed into space last year – will be able to observe our star during the peak of its solar cycle. According to scientific data, this occurs roughly once every 11 years as the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the North and South poles swapping positions. This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun changing from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – massive bubbles of plasma that blow out of the Sun's outermost layer. Composed of ionized particles, a coronal mass ejection can weigh of billions of tons and reach a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can head out toward various directions, even toward our planet. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection about half a day to traverse the vast distance Earth-Sun distance. "In the normal or quiet periods, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions a day," explains an astrophysics expert. "Next year, it's anticipated there will be over ten each day." Studying CMEs is one of the most important scientific objectives for the Indian first solar observatory. Firstly, as these eruptions offer a chance to study the Sun in the center of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space. Northern lights illuminated the darkness across America in November Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure Coronal mass ejections seldom present immediate danger to human life, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting the weather in near space, where about thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, are stationed. "The most spectacular manifestations of a CME include northern lights, being direct evidence that charged particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the expert clarifies. "However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable power grids and affect weather and communication satellites." Historical Solar Incidents The most powerful solar storm in history was the Carrington Event which knocked out communication systems across the globe In 1989, a part of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, leaving six million people without power for hours In November 2015, solar storms disturbed air traffic control, leading to disruption across Scandinavia and various European airports 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 in real time, measure its heat at origin and track its trajectory, this serves as a forewarning to switch off power grids and spacecraft redirecting them out of harm's way. The solar atmosphere is only visible when the Moon blocks the Sun from our perspective The Mission's Special Capability While other space observatories watching our star, Aditya-L1 has an advantage compared to rivals when it comes to watching the corona. "The instrument is the exact size that lets it nearly mimic the Moon, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it continuous observation of almost all solar atmosphere around the clock, throughout the year, even during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert. In other words, the coronagraph acts like a synthetic eclipse, blocking the solar glare to let researchers constantly study the dim solar atmosphere – a feat the real Moon does only during specific moments. Additionally, it's unique that can study solar events using optical wavelengths, enabling it to determine eruption heat and thermal output – crucial data indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling toward Earth. Readiness 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 observed recently. It originated in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. The eruption's weight was 270 million tonnes – for comparison that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes. Initially, the heat was 1.8 million degrees Celsius with energy equivalent comparable to 2.2 million megatons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 kilotons in scale each. Even though the numbers make it sound massive, the expert classifies it as a "medium-sized" one. The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs on our planet was 100 million megatons and when solar peak occurs, we could see CMEs with energy content equal to even more than that. "In my view this eruption we evaluated to have occurred during periods of typical solar activity. This establishes the standard for future comparison assessing what to expect when the maximum activity cycle occurs," he says. "The insights gained will assist in developing the countermeasures to implement safeguarding satellites in orbit. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he adds.