NASA aims to fund concept studies on five mission proposals aimed at studying the dynamic nature of the sun and the changing space atmosphere due to its causes around the earth.
Such information will help understand how “space weather” affects satellites in orbit, providing navigation and messaging; Technology on earth, such as power stations; And the health of astronauts on inter-plan travel.
There are five proposals: a storm, which will study the energy radiation in and around the Earth; Heliosworm, which will study the flow of particles from the sun on a variety of different scales; Muse, who will observe events in the Sun’s atmosphere with unprecedented precision; Arcs, which will study in detail whether the aurora on Earth is stimulated by the atmosphere of space; And Solaris, which will return images of the sun’s invisible polar regions.
The five proposals have been selected because of the valuable science of returning each mission, and because they are possible to build and launch with current technology.
The cost of each of these studies is 25 1.25m (1m) and will run simultaneously, for nine months. At the end of this time, NASA will evaluate the study and then select two proposals to proceed for launch.
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