The Sun-Earth Connection Roadmap is a strategic
planning document developed for NASA's Office of
Space Science (OSS) by members of the solar and
heliospheric physics, magnetospheric physics, and
aeronomy communities. It sets forth, in terms of three "quests", the principal
scientific questions and themes that give direction and
shape to our efforts to understand the workings of the
Sun and the nature and extent of its influence on the
Earth and other solar system bodies. The Roadmap
outlines fifteen candidate missions that can achieve the objectives
of the quests. The missions are organized in five "campaigns," according
to the science themes and objectives that a particular set of
missions is intended to address. Because the phenomena
to be understood are often inseparably linked, some
missions are included in more than one campaign, although each
mission is primary to only one campaign.
The required technologies are indicated for
each mission and are summarized for all the missions in two
"key technologies"
charts. (A separate
document detailing the technologies needed to implement
future Sun-Earth Connection missions is currently under
development and will be available in spring 1997.)
The Sun-Earth Connection Roadmap is an essential element of the OSS strategic planning process. This process will culminate in a meeting in the spring of 1997 at which OSS senior staff, Space Science Advisory Committee (SScAC) members, and representatives of the space science community will integrate the research initiatives of the four OSS science programs into a single, comprehensive strategic mission plan for the first two decades of the twenty-first century.
The Sun-Earth Connection Roadmap is the product of two community-wide meetings--one hosted by the Applied Physics Laboratory in April 1996, the other hosted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in October 1996--and of meetings of the Sun-Earth Connection Advisory Subcommittee (SECAS) in May 1996 and February 1997. Important contributions to the Roadmap have been made by individual members of the space physics and aeronomy communities as well. Overall responsibility for the development of the Sun-Earth Connection Roadmap was assigned by the director of the Sun-Earth Connection program to a 22-member "strategic planning integration team." The members of this team were selected on the basis of nominations from the space physics community and represented the major subdisciplines of the field of space physics.
The material on this Web site will shortly be available in PDF format.