January 3, 2025
3 minutes read
Solar physics will shine in 2025
The science of the sun and its impact on the solar system is a broad field with a very exciting 2025 ahead.
The sun sends out a continuous stream of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels about three times the distance past all the planets and all the way to Pluto before being interrupted by the interstellar medium. This forms a huge bubble around the sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
If our solar system loses a few moons or even a planet, it may be hard to notice the difference. But when we lose the sun, everything changes. But despite the neighborhood’s key role, scientists still have many questions about how the Sun works and how it affects daily life on Earth and in space. And 2025 is poised to play a key role in providing the answers.
Three factors combine to make the coming year particularly interesting in the field known as solar physics. The unveiling of a blueprint designed to guide the sun’s natural activity cycle, spacecraft launches, and the next decade of work in the field.
The Sun is currently at the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, and scientists expect it to remain there for perhaps another year or so before its activity begins to wane. And although the current solar cycle 25 may not break any records, it has produced numerous solar flares and other dramatic explosions that scientists can monitor using recent new equipment. Those observers include the largest solar telescope in history and the closest spacecraft to the Sun in history.
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And this year will see many new companies working on these groundbreaking projects. NASA alone expects to launch six missions to study the sun and the different ways it shapes the solar system. Among them is the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), designed to help scientists map the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence. Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE), a pair of spacecraft orbiting Mars to study the planet’s space weather experience; And the Polarimeter Integration of the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission combines four small satellites orbiting Earth to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
Moreover, American solar physicists have something new, so to speak. 10 year reportreleased last month, is a blueprint for the coming decade that outlines a variety of national science priorities that federal agencies plan to begin implementing next year. “I’m really excited,” says Joe Westlake, a solar physicist and director of the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
“This decade is an aspirational view of our future,” he says. “There’s a lot of really good stuff in this.”
For future spacecraft missions, the report recommends that NASA pursue two large-scale projects. One mission consists of a total of 26 spacecraft. Two will be placed high above our planet’s poles along circular orbits and will take images of the aurora and Earth’s magnetic field from afar. Others will be positioned in more elliptical orbits through the geomagnetic field, collecting localized observations of the field’s strength and nearby plasma. “Having over 20 spacecraft and the ability to bring them all together at the same time, looking down and looking up, to collect observations is going to be a really amazing dataset tool for us,” said Nicki Rayl, acting deputy director of Heliophysics. “It is,” he said. division. “I think it will be groundbreaking.”
The second large-scale project is a spacecraft designed to swoop around the sun’s poles multiple times during the entire 11-year solar activity cycle. The current NASA mission, Parker Solar Probe, is dedicated to observing the Sun above the equatorial region as it moves closer and closer to the Sun’s surface. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s ongoing mission, Solar Orbiter, has provided only a partial view of the solar poles. As a result, our star’s poles remain a mysterious region, despite playing an important role in the evolution of the Sun’s magnetic field. “It’s difficult to get to the poles of the sun, and it’s a tricky environment to be in,” says Rayl. “That’s the next uncharted territory.”
On Earth, this ambitious mission will be powered by the Next Generation Global Oscillation Network Group (ngGONG), which builds on the existing GONG group of observatories that began work in 1995. These observatories are spread around the world to keep the sun in sight. Just as geologists use seismology to study the Earth’s interior, they study the interior of the Sun by observing the waves passing through it using a technique called heliodynamics.
“Some of these bold, surprising goals in 10-year increments help us really dive into the unknown and discover science,” says Rayl. And at the same time, she said, the mission starting next year will provide more insights and new questions about the sun. “I’m very excited that we can get into data collection mode,” she says. “It’s time to go now.”
