NASA Sun-Earth Connection Program strategic planning and technology requirements (2000-2025)

The Sun-Earth Connection (SEC) Program is one of NASA´s four major science themes. The goal of the SEC Program is to understand our changing Sun and its effects on the solar system, life and society. This goal is addressed through four fundamental quests with supporting campaigns composed of a sequence of missions making new measurements and providing a variety of observations from many vantage points to address the dynamic phenomena in the Sun-Earth system. These missions are planned to be enabled by technology development in key areas including advanced propulsion, spacecraft technology, scientific instrumentation, and information architecture. The application of the knowledge gained from the SEC program will provide an understanding of how solar variability affects the performance and operational lifetime of space hardware, the safety of humans in the near-Earth space environment or on extended exploration missions, and short and long term terrestrial climate patterns. The application of this understanding is presently being addressed in a SEC Initiative entitled “Living With A Star”