The case for studying other planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres in Heliophysics

Abstract

Heliophysics is the field that "studies the nature of the Sun, and how it influences the very nature of space -and, in turn, the atmospheres of planetary bodies and the technology that exists there." [1] However, NASA's Heliophysics Division tends to limit study of planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres to only those of Earth. This leaves exploration and understanding of space plasma physics at other worlds to the purview of the Planetary Science and Astrophysics Divisions. This is detrimental to the study of space plasma physics in general since, although some cross-divisional funding opportunities do exist, vital elements of space plasma physics can be best addressed by extending the expertise of Heliophysics scientists to other stellar and planetary magnetospheres. However, the diverse worlds within the solar system provide crucial environmental conditions that are not replicated at Earth but can provide deep insight into fundamental space plasma physics processes. Studying planetary systems with Heliophysics objectives, comprehensive instrumentation, and new grant opportunities for analysis and modeling would enable a novel understanding of fundamental and universal processes of space plasma physics. As such, the Heliophysics community should be prepared to consider, prioritize, and fund dedicated Heliophysics efforts to planetary targets to specifically study space physics and aeronomy objectives.

Advancing Theory and Modeling Efforts in Heliophysics

“…An incomplete list of processes (with corresponding white papers) includes dynamos, the acceleration and transport of energetic particles, magnetic reconnection (Ji et al 2022;Chen et al 2022), collisionless shocks (Goodrich et al 2022), turbulence and waves in fluid and kinetic scales, wave-particle interaction (Thorne 2010), plasma heating and energy dissipation (Haggerty et al 2022) and effects of partially ionized plasmas. These processes underlie many important heliophysical phenomena, including solar and heliospheric magnetic fields, energetic particles and radiation (Shih et al 2022;Chen et al 2022;Turner et al 2022;Kollmann et al 2022), coronal and solar wind heating (Klimchuk et al 2022;Mondal et al 2022), the origin of solar eruptions and magnetospheric storms and substorms (Chen et al 2022;Green et al 2022), the shape and size of the heliosphere, ionospheric outflow, and the impact of solar activity on planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres in our solar system (Cohen et al 2022;Crary et al 2022) andbeyond (Garcia-Sage et al 2022).…”