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The Sun is the engine on which life in the solar system depends.
This campaign seeks solutions to a broad class of problems
associated with the dynamic effects of solar, interplanetary,
magnetospheric, and upper atmospheric phenomena that have an
impact on humans. In particular, it is focused on the impact of these
phenomena on modern technology and the terrestrial climate and
environment, with the risks that they pose to the human habitation
of space, and with long-term effects on the origin and continued
evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.
Although modern technology is increasingly dependent on orbiting communication and navigation systems, these systems, and many essential ground-based technologies such as power grids, are increasingly subject to the effects of solar activity and associated geomagnetic storms and ionospheric disturbances. This campaign seeks to develop the observing platforms, data bases, and understanding to enable other public and private agencies to provide greatly improved capability to forecast space weather. We are embarking on a new era of continuous human presence in space. Astronauts and the space hardware they depend on are subjected to risks from highly variable particle radiation from several sources, as well as other hazards also driven by the Sun. This campaign will develop both the tools and the knowledge to make it safer for humans to live in space. The dynamic Sun is coupled to the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere through electromagnetic radiation, solar wind plasma, energetic particles, and the interplanetary magnetic field. We seek to trace the physical mechanisms by which these solar connections operate and to assess quantitatively the role of natural and manmade influences on atmospheric chemistry, climate, the environment, and other regions of global change. Solar variations, and the solar connections studied here govern the ability of a planet to develop and sustain life. The Sun-Earth system remains our best model for understanding how life may have evolved elsewhere in the universe.
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