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Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society
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SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS: A SCIENCE FOR A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
SWMI Science Goal 2. Identify the controlling factors that determine the dominant sources of magnetospheric plasma.
SWMI Science Goal 3. Understand how plasmas interact within the magnetosphere and at its boundaries.
SWMI Science Goal 4. Establish how energetic particles are accelerated, transported, and lost.
SWMI Science Goal 5. Discover how magnetic reconnection is triggered and modulated.
SWMI Science Goal 6. Understand the origins and effects of turbulence and wave-particle interactions.
SWMI Science Goal 7. Determine how magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling controls
system-level dynamics.
SWMI Science Goal 8. Identify the structures, dynamics, and linkages in other planetary magnetospheric systems.
These are ambitious goals, and their accomplishment will require intelligent use of the variety of
research tools that are available. Achieving some of them will require new measurements from strategic
missions, either already under development (MMS and RBSP 2 ) or to be started in the coming decade. Other
contributions toward accomplishing these goals will come from community-proposed Explorer missions,
suborbital flights, CubeSats, operational satellites, and instruments flown on commercial platforms as rides
of opportunity. Studies that combine data from the numerous existing spacecraft will elucidate important
aspects of global coupling, while analytical theory, laboratory studies, and especially powerful numerical
simulations will complement the various spacecraft measurements in a synergistic attack on the science
questions. However, because of budget constraints and as-yet immature technology, a number of critical
investigations must be deferred to a later decade, requiring investments in the coming decade in the areas
of technology innovation and development, as well as in ways to more effectively couple theory and data.
In this chapter, the SWMI panel advocates a coherent and balanced program of research in solar
wind-magnetosphere interactions based on a prioritized set of imperatives that will enable a cost-effective
approach to accomplishing the SWMI science goals. These imperatives are sorted into three categories:
(1) missions, (2) DRIVE-related initiatives, and (3) space weather. For simplicity, the panel assigned each
imperative to a single primary category, although some actually apply to multiple categories. The panel
prioritized the imperatives not only within but also across the three categories in order to identify the most
important and most cost-effective actions to accomplish its pressing science goals. The five overall SWMI
highest-priority imperatives that are developed in this chapter are the following:
SWMI Imperative 1. Enhance the resources dedicated to the Explorer program and broaden the range
of cost categories.
SWMI Imperative 2. Complete the strategic missions that are currently in development (MMS, RBSP/
BARREL) as cost-effectively as possible.
2 RBSP—the Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission—was launched successfully on August 30, 2012, shortly after the release of the
prepublication version of this report. The mission has since been renamed the Van Allen Probes.
Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society
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SOLAR AND SPACE PHYSICS: A SCIENCE FOR A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY
SWMI Science Goal 2. Identify the controlling factors that determine the dominant sources of magnetospheric plasma.
SWMI Science Goal 3. Understand how plasmas interact within the magnetosphere and at its boundaries.
SWMI Science Goal 4. Establish how energetic particles are accelerated, transported, and lost.
SWMI Science Goal 5. Discover how magnetic reconnection is triggered and modulated.
SWMI Science Goal 6. Understand the origins and effects of turbulence and wave-particle interactions.
SWMI Science Goal 7. Determine how magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling controls
system-level dynamics.
SWMI Science Goal 8. Identify the structures, dynamics, and linkages in other planetary magnetospheric systems.
These are ambitious goals, and their accomplishment will require intelligent use of the variety of
research tools that are available. Achieving some of them will require new measurements from strategic
missions, either already under development (MMS and RBSP 2 ) or to be started in the coming decade. Other
contributions toward accomplishing these goals will come from community-proposed Explorer missions,
suborbital flights, CubeSats, operational satellites, and instruments flown on commercial platforms as rides
of opportunity. Studies that combine data from the numerous existing spacecraft will elucidate important
aspects of global coupling, while analytical theory, laboratory studies, and especially powerful numerical
simulations will complement the various spacecraft measurements in a synergistic attack on the science
questions. However, because of budget constraints and as-yet immature technology, a number of critical
investigations must be deferred to a later decade, requiring investments in the coming decade in the areas
of technology innovation and development, as well as in ways to more effectively couple theory and data.
In this chapter, the SWMI panel advocates a coherent and balanced program of research in solar
wind-magnetosphere interactions based on a prioritized set of imperatives that will enable a cost-effective
approach to accomplishing the SWMI science goals. These imperatives are sorted into three categories:
(1) missions, (2) DRIVE-related initiatives, and (3) space weather. For simplicity, the panel assigned each
imperative to a single primary category, although some actually apply to multiple categories. The panel
prioritized the imperatives not only within but also across the three categories in order to identify the most
important and most cost-effective actions to accomplish its pressing science goals. The five overall SWMI
highest-priority imperatives that are developed in this chapter are the following:
SWMI Imperative 1. Enhance the resources dedicated to the Explorer program and broaden the range
of cost categories.
SWMI Imperative 2. Complete the strategic missions that are currently in development (MMS, RBSP/
BARREL) as cost-effectively as possible.
2 RBSP—the Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission—was launched successfully on August 30, 2012, shortly after the release of the
prepublication version of this report. The mission has since been renamed the Van Allen Probes.