🔗 Share this article The Reason 2026 Will Be an Unprecedented Year for the Indian Sun Mission A massive solar eruption can be several times larger than our planet Regarding Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be like no other. This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered in orbit recently – will be able to watch our star when it reaches its maximum activity cycle. As per scientific data, it comes approximately once every 11 years when the Sun's magnetic poles flip – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles changing places. This period of great turbulence. It involves the Sun transition from calm to stormy and features a significant rise in the number of solar eruptions and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt from the solar corona. Made up of ionized particles, a CME can weigh of billions of tons and can attain velocities exceeding 2,000 miles per second. It can travel toward various directions, including towards the Earth. At top speed, the journey takes an ejection 15 hours to cover the 150 million km between Earth and the Sun. "During typical or low-activity times, the Sun emits a few solar eruptions daily," says an astrophysics expert. "In 2026, we expect there will be 10 or more daily." Researching coronal mass ejections ranks among the most important research goals of India's maiden solar mission. One, because the ejections offer a chance to learn about the Sun at the centre of our solar system, and secondly, since events that take place on the Sun threaten systems on our planet and in space. Northern lights lit up the night sky over the US last autumn Effects on Earth and Space Infrastructure Coronal mass ejections rarely pose a direct threat to people, yet they impact life on Earth through generating geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in near space, where nearly thousands of spacecraft, including many from India, orbit. "The most beautiful displays of a CME include northern lights, being a clear example that solar particles from Sun are travelling toward our planet," the expert clarifies. "But they can also cause electronic systems on a satellite fail, disable electrical networks and affect meteorological and telecom spacecraft." Past Solar Incidents The strongest solar event in history occurred during the Carrington Event that disabled communication systems across the globe In 1989, sections of Canadian electrical network was knocked out, affecting six million people in darkness for nine hours In November 2015, solar storms disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and some other European air hubs Recently in 2022, an ejection caused dozens of spacecraft failing If we are able to observe events in the solar atmosphere and detect a solar storm or a coronal mass ejection in real time, record its temperature at the source and watch its path, this serves as advanced warning to shut down electrical systems and spacecraft and move them to safety. The solar atmosphere can be seen during a total solar eclipse from Earth Aditya-L1's Special Capability While other solar missions observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere. "Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate the Moon, completely blocking the Sun's photosphere and allowing it an uninterrupted view of nearly the entire solar atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," says the researcher. In other words, the coronagraph functions as a synthetic eclipse, obscuring the Sun's bright surface allowing scientists continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses provide only during specific moments. Additionally, this is the only mission capable of examining solar events in visible light, letting it measure eruption heat and thermal output – key clues indicating the intensity of an eruption when traveling our direction. Readiness for Maximum Activity In preparation for next year's solar maximum, scientists collaborated analyzing the data gathered from a major solar eruption recorded by the mission has recorded until now. It originated in September 2024 during early hours. The eruption's weight totaled billions of tons – the iceberg that sank Titanic was 1.5 million tonnes. Initially, the heat reached extreme levels and the energy content comparable to millions of tons of explosives – relative to the atomic bombs used in Japan were much smaller in scale respectively. Even though the numbers make it sound incredibly large, the expert describes it as a moderate event. The asteroid which wiped out prehistoric life on Earth 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 this eruption we evaluated happened during periods was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark that we'll be using to evaluate what is in store during solar maximum arrives," he says. "The learnings gained will assist in work out protective measures to implement to protect spacecraft in orbit. They will also help us gain deeper knowledge of near-Earth space," he concludes.