Solar and Space Physics for the Nation: An Overview of the 2024–2033 Decadal Survey (2025)
Chapter: Defining the Path Forward: Science Priorities to Shape the Next Decade
Defining the Path Forward: Science Priorities to Shape the Next Decade
Fundamental discoveries are waiting to be made by venturing into new environments and bringing new capabilities to familiar places. The decadal survey prioritizes three science themes—interconnectedness, building blocks, and new environment—that capture and combine common threads within the field of solar and space physics. Each broad science theme poses guiding questions to steer the scientific research of the next decade.
Sun-Earth-Space: Our Interconnected Home
Our local cosmos, dominated by the energy released by the Sun, provides an opportunity to study plasma and neutral interactions ranging from those deep in the Sun’s interior to those in the solar atmosphere, the solar wind, magnetospheres and atmospheres of planets and moons, and the farthest reaches of the solar system where the solar wind slams into the interstellar medium. These interconnected natural systems—referred to as “heliosystems”—form a complex and dynamic system of systems, where interactions at one level can drive changes throughout.
Future research and discovery will further advance our understanding of how these components work individually and together and reveal how interactions at small scales can drive large-scale space weather phenomena like solar storms and auroras. This theme focuses on the following three guiding questions:
- How does our heliosphere function as a nested system?
- How do heliosystem boundaries manifest themselves?
- How do the components of the Sun–Earth system interact with each other?
A Laboratory in Space: Building Blocks of Understanding
From the heliosphere that enfolds the Sun and its planets to the most remote reaches of space, magnetized plasmas follow the same fundamental laws; by unraveling the intricate, still-mysterious processes at work in our local space environment, we also illuminate the universal engines that power dynamic phenomena throughout the cosmos. These fundamental processes are best observed in situ, with missions, projects, and theory and modeling that use the local cosmos as a laboratory. This theme is structured around three guiding scientific questions:
- How is the Sun’s magnetic field created and maintained globally, and what causes its cyclical variation?
- How are explosive phenomena created and dissipated across the heliosphere, and what are the fundamental processes that contribute to energy conversion?
- How do the fundamental processes govern the cross-scale coupling, and what are the global properties and consequences of the processes?
New Environments: Exploring Our Cosmic Neighborhood and Beyond
The study of other planetary atmospheres, magnetospheres, and the boundaries of the solar system where it meets interstellar space provides valuable insight into the processes at work in space environments and how similar processes may occur around other stars and exoplanets.
Future human missions to the Moon and other bodies will offer new chances to explore how solar wind and plasma interact with different environments, potentially improving understanding of space weather and its effects on technology and habitability. Progress relies on having space physics instrumentation onboard planetary missions, which is achieved through the ongoing, strong cross-divisional collaboration and coordination within the NASA Science Mission Directorate. These guiding questions drive the exploration of new environments in space:
- What can we learn from comparative studies of planetary systems?
- Why does the Sun and its environment differ from other similar stars?
- What internal and external characteristics have played a role in creating a space environment conducive to life?
