At its current solar maximum, our Sun has been pretty busy of late, flinging parts of itself at Earth and raising concerns about effects on satellites and power grids while also gracing us with incredible aurorae.
Solar and space-weather scientists have been busy too. They’ve just released a mammoth, nearly 800-page report to set priorities for their fields in the coming decade.
And no such report would be complete without a couple of exciting space missions.
Sponsored by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “The Next Decade of Discovery in Solar and Space Physics: Exploring and Safeguarding Humanity’s Home in Space” sets out visions and plans for improving our knowledge of “the local cosmos,” from the Sun’s polar secrets to its sometimes-dangerous effects on our technology when space weather disrupts cell service and the internet, for example.
The decadal survey lays out a number of recommendations distilled from the input of hundreds of scientists, including:
* The creation of the HelioSystems Laboratory that will coordinate research and projects across government agencies and other institutions.
* Two new space missions. One would be a satellite constellation with two other imaging craft that would further study how solar physics plays out in the near-Earth environment. Another would send a probe to image and measure the Sun’s poles to investigate how the solar magnetic field is created and how it affects the Sun’s fiery activity.
* Construction of the National Science Foundation’s Next Generation Global Oscillations Network Group, a series of ground-based solar observatories that would study our star’s vibrating layers, enabling scientists to use helioseismology to puzzle out the Sun’s internal structure and processes.
* Development of the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope, which would track the Sun’s highly variable emissions in both microwave and radio wavelengths.
* Building a proof-of-concept for the Distributed Arrays of Small Heterogenous Instruments project, which, according to the NSF solicitation, would take “high spatial and temporal resolution measurements to determine the local, regional, and global scale processes that are essential for addressing the fundamental questions in solar and space physics.”
* Having the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration institute a research program into space weather while collaborating with the Department of Defense to create better modeling for space weather predictions.
* Increasing the number of NASA’s missions under its Heliophysics Space Weather program while also looking for cooperation with other agencies on the topic of space weather.
According to the National Academies, “focused research over the next decade would result in greater ability to forecast coronal mass ejections, solar flares, and geomagnetic storms; monitor radiation environments for crewed and robotic missions; and model low-Earth orbit satellite and debris trajectories.”
Finally, the report lays out a vision of a field with a more unified approach to space and solar physics across the many disciplines that embrace it, thus helping with student education, researcher recruitment and retention, and public outreach.
Investment in these missions and projects will face some headwinds in the current budget climate, with the incoming administration pledging budget cuts and a space agency facing austerity due to the inability to keep up with inflation. Congress, by continuing to budget using continuing resolutions instead of the normal process of hearings, has stymied agency growth. That said, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head NASA, entrepreneur and private space astronaut Jared Isaacman, has said that he supports space science missions while being critical of the cost of the expensive Space Launch System for human spaceflight.
Time will tell.
“The solar and space physics field is at a pivotal point right now,” said report co-author and Dartmouth astronomer Robyn Millan in a statement. “And we have the opportunity in the coming years to pursue some really exciting science — both for science’s sake and to achieve major improvements to our understanding of things like space weather. Researching this … is increasingly important for society, and our infrastructure and health, and will have real impacts here on Earth and on our efforts to explore the solar system.”