NASA picks five new mission concept studies to study space environments

Each of the proposals was selected on the basis of potential science value and feasibility of development plans and will receive USD1.25 million to conduct a nine-month mission concept study. Thereafter NASA will finalize up to two proposals with separate launch opportunity and timeframe for each potential mission.

US space agency NASA has selected five new proposals for concept studies of missions that will provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Sun and the constantly evolving space environment.

Each of the proposals was selected on the basis of potential science value and feasibility of development plans and will receive USD1.25 million to conduct a nine-month mission concept study. Thereafter NASA will finalize up to two proposals to go ahead to launch, each with separate launch opportunity and timeframe.

"We constantly seek missions that use cutting edge technology and novel approaches to push the boundaries of science. Each one of these proposals offers the chance to observe something we have never before seen or to provide unprecedented insights into key areas of research, all to further the exploration of the universe we live in," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington

The Medium-Class Explorer proposals include:

Solar-Terrestrial Observer for the Response of the Magnetosphere (STORM): Led by David Sibeck at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, STORM would provide the first-ever global view of our vast space weather system in which the constant flow of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, interacts with Earth's magnetosphere.

HelioSwarm: The Nature of Turbulence in Space Plasmas: Led by Harlan Spence at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, HelioSwarm would observe the solar wind over a wide range of scales to determine the fundamental space physics processes that lead energy from large-scale motion to cascade down to finer scales of particle movement within the plasma that fills space, a process that leads to the heating of such plasma.

Multi-slit Solar Explorer (MUSE): Led by Bart De Pontieu at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, MUSE would provide high-cadence observations of the mechanisms driving an array of processes and events in the Sun's atmosphere, known as Corona, including what drives solar eruptions such as solar flares, as well as what heats the corona to temperatures far above that of the solar surface.

Auroral Reconstruction CubeSwarm (ARCS): Led by Kristina Lynch at Dartmouth University in Hanover, ARCS would explore the processes that contribute to aurora at size scales that have been rarely studied: at the intermediate scale between the smaller, local phenomena leading directly to the visible aurora and the larger, global dynamics of the space weather system coursing through the ionosphere and thermosphere.

Solaris: Revealing the Mysteries of the Sun's Poles: Led by Donald Hassler at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Solaris would address fundamental questions of solar and stellar physics by observing three solar rotations over each solar pole to obtain observations of light, magnetic fields, and movement in the Sun's surface, the photosphere.