Performance Assessment of NASA's Heliophysics Program

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Performance Assessment of NASA's Heliophysics Program

Since the 1990s, the pace of discovery in the field of solar and space physics has accelerated, largely owing to prior and continuing NASA investments in its Heliophysics Great Observatory fleet of spacecraft. These enable researchers to investigate connections between events on the Sun and in the space environment by combining multiple points of view. The field of solar and space physics comprises the phenomenology and physics of space plasmas and neutral gases, both individually and as coupled, nonlinear interacting systems driven from the Sun to Earth, to other members of the solar system, and out to the very edge of the heliosphere. Through NASA's current Heliophysics Great Observatory, researchers use 12 spacecraft to address the basic science of variable solar outputs, their transmission to the geospace environment and beyond, and their impacts on technological systems. Solar and space physics requires synergy between observational and theoretical initiatives, and between basic research and targeted research programs. Investments by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Defense (DOD) in space weather instruments, ground-based observatories, research, technology, and education have been important to sustaining progress.