Related papers: The Solar Orbiter mission -- Science overview
Context. The Sun's complex corona is the source of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field. While the large scale morphology is well understood, the impact of variations in coronal properties on the scale of a few degrees on…
Solar sails can play a critical role in enabling solar and heliophysics missions. Solar sail technology within NASA is currently at 80% of TRL-6, suitable for an in-flight technology demonstration. It is conceivable that an initial…
The Pandora SmallSat is a NASA flight project aimed at studying the atmospheres of exoplanets -- planets orbiting stars outside our Solar System. Pandora will provide the first dataset of simultaneous, multiband (visible and NIR),…
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) are major sources of magnetic storms on Earth and are therefore considered to be the most dangerous space weather events. The Observatories of Solar Corona and Active…
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission will provide simultaneous measurements from two spacecraft, offering an unprecedented opportunity to investigate magnetospheric and exospheric dynamics at Mercury as well as their interactions with the solar…
A key goal of the Solar Orbiter mission is to connect elemental abundance measurements of the solar wind enveloping the spacecraft with EUV spectroscopic observations of their solar sources, but this is not an easy exercise. Observations…
We present the scientific case for a future space-based telescope aimed at very high spatial and temporal resolution imaging of the solar photosphere and chromosphere. Previous missions (e.g., HINODE, SUNRISE) have demonstrated the power of…
Solar irradiance variability has been monitored almost exclusively from the Earth's perspective. {We present a method to combine the unprecedented observations of the photospheric magnetic field and continuum intensity from outside the…
Kepler's primary mission is a search for earth-size exoplanets in the habitable zone of late-type stars using the transit method. To effectively accomplish this mission, Kepler orbits the Sun and stares nearly continuously at one…
The advanced space-based solar observatory (ASO-S) is the first Chinese solar mission which is scheduled to be launched in the end of 2021. It is designed to study the magnetic field, the solar coronal mass ejections the solar flares as…
Determining the mechanisms responsible for the heating of the coronal plasma and maintaining and accelerating the solar wind are long standing goals in solar physics. There is a clear need to constrain the energy, mass and momentum flux…
Although vital for life on Earth, solar activity poses questions and increasing threats to humanity due to the Sun's unknown dynamics, intensified by our dependence on terrestrial and space-based infrastructure. This situation is compounded…
The Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) is an instrument onboard Aditya--L1, the first solar space observatory of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), India, launched on September 2, 2023. SUIT is designed to image the Sun…
The H{\alpha} line is an important optical line in solar observations containing the information from the photosphere to the chromosphere. To study the mechanisms of solar eruptions and the plasma dynamics in the lower atmosphere, the…
NASA's Parker Solar Probe (Parker) spacecraft reached its first perihelion of 35.7 solar radii on November 5th, 2018. To aid in mission planning, and in anticipation of the unprecedented measurements to be returned, in late October, we…
Despite investments in multiple space and ground-based solar observatories by the global community, the Sun's polar regions remain unchartered territory - the last great frontier for solar observations. Breaching this frontier is…
The Habitable Exoplanet Observatory, or HabEx, has been designed to be the Great Observatory of the 2030s. For the first time in human history, technologies have matured sufficiently to enable an affordable space-based telescope mission…
(abridged) The acceleration of particles at the Sun and their propagation through interplanetary space are key topics in heliophysics. Specifically, solar energetic electrons (SEEs) measured in situ can be linked to solar flares and coronal…
We discuss a possibility to survey many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) with a single launch using a few smallscale spacecraft, each equipped with solar sails, which could be unfurled from a single interplanetary bus at the perihelion of that…
Long-term synoptic observations of the Sun are critical for advancing our understanding of Sun as an astrophysical object, understanding the solar irradiance and its role in solar-terrestrial climate, for developing predictive capabilities…