January 3, 2025
3 1 minute read
Heliophysics is set to shine in 2025
The science of the sun and its effects on the solar system is a sprawling science with a very exciting 2025 forecast
The Sun sends out a continuous stream of charged particles called the solar wind, which eventually travels past all the planets to about three times the distance to Pluto before being blocked by the interstellar medium. This forms a giant bubble around the sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Concept Image Laboratory
If our solar system lost a few moons or even a planet, it might be hard to notice the difference, but if we lose the sun, everything changes. Despite its role as a living hub, scientists still have a whole host of questions about how the Sun works and how it affects our daily lives on Earth and in space. The year 2025 is expected to play a major role in obtaining answers.
Three factors are combining to make the coming year particularly exciting for the discipline known as heliophysics: the Sun’s natural activity cycle, a fleet of spacecraft launches, and the release of a blueprint designed to guide the next decade of work in the field.
Currently, the Sun is in the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, where scientists expect it to remain for another year or so before its activity begins to decline. Although the current 25th solar cycle did not break any records, it did produce a group of solar flares and other amazing explosions that scientists were able to monitor using modern new instruments. These observers include the largest solar telescope ever built, and a spacecraft that has made the closest approach to the sun in history.
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This year, these pioneering projects will acquire a lot of new companies; NASA alone expects to launch six missions to study the Sun and the myriad ways in which the solar system was formed. Among them is the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, designed to help scientists map the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence; the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, or ESCAPADE, two spacecraft that will orbit Mars to study the Red Planet’s experience of space weather; and the Polarimeter Unifying Corona and Heliosphere mission, or PUNCH, which brings together four small Earth-orbiting satellites to study the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
Moreover, solar physicists in the United States have a so-called new Decadal reporta blueprint for the coming decade that outlines a set of national science priorities, was released last month, and federal agencies will begin implementing it next year. “I’m really excited about it,” says Joe Westlake, a heliophysicist and director of the Heliophysics Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“These contracts are aspirational views for our future,” he says. “There are some really good things about this.”
For future spacecraft missions, the report recommends that NASA pursue two large projects. One mission will consist of a total of 26 spacecraft: two of which will be stationed high above our planet’s poles in circular orbits and will capture images of the aurora and Earth’s magnetic field from afar. The rest will be placed in elliptical orbits passing through the geomagnetic field, where they will collect local observations of its strength and nearby plasma. “More than two dozen spacecraft and the ability to have them together at the same time, looking down and up and collecting observations, is going to be an amazing data collection tool for us,” says Nikki Ryle, acting deputy director of the Heliophysics Division. to divide. “I think it will be groundbreaking.”
The second major project will be a spacecraft designed to swoop over the sun’s poles several times over the course of a full 11-year solar activity cycle. NASA’s current mission, Parker Solar Probe, was diving close to the Sun’s surface, but it was committed to observing the Sun above its equatorial region. Meanwhile, an ongoing European Space Agency mission called Solar Orbiter has provided only partial views of the solar poles. Thus, the poles of our star remain mysterious regions, even as they play a major role in the evolution of the Sun’s magnetic field. “Going to the poles of the sun is difficult, and entering a difficult environment is difficult,” Ryle says. “This is the next uncharted territory.”
On Earth, these ambitious missions will be augmented by the Next Generation Global Oscillation Network (NGGONG) constellation, which builds on the existing GONG constellation of observatories that began operating in 1995. These observatories are spread across the globe to keep the Sun in sight. Throughout the day, they use a technique called helioseismology to study the Sun’s interior by observing the waves that pass through it, just as geologists use seismology to study the Earth’s interior.
“Some of these bold, amazing goals in the current decade are really helping us jump into the unknown and make some scientific discoveries,” Ryle says. In the meantime, she notes, missions launched next year will produce more insights — and new questions to ask — about the Sun. “I’m thrilled that we’re going to be in data collection mode,” she says. “It’s time to go.”