NASA Heliophysics Needs Major Budget Increases, Decadal Survey Argues

Solar physics will need a big budget boost to meet the goals of the latest Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey. The report, released by the National Academies in December, puts forward a research strategy to complete two upper atmosphere NASA missions that were high-priority in the last decadal as well as two new billion-dollar NASA missions.

Other major recommendations include constructing three new ground-based projects with funding from the National Science Foundation, increasing funding for basic heliophysics research at NASA, and expanding space weather preparedness efforts. These efforts would together feed into a new HelioSystems Laboratory construct, a nexus for data generated by disparate heliophysics projects.

“Without new missions, the imbalanced program and resulting lack of scientific progress would be devastating to the solar and space physics community,” the report argues. “Furthermore, the lack of progress could be devastating to society because it would inhibit progress on space weather prediction and mitigation.”

High-priority missions for NASA

The report recommends NASA proceed with the Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC) despite the agency’s proposal to cancel the mission, estimated to cost around $1 billion. The report also endorses the Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere–Ionosphere Coupling (DYNAMIC) mission, another high priority of the previous decadal that has also faced budgetary headwinds despite being significantly cheaper than GDC.

For new flagship missions, the report proposes a Solar Polar Orbiter that would be the first mission to image the extended polar regions of the Sun, helping answer fundamental questions about how the Sun generates its magnetic field and how the field drives solar activity. It also proposes a mission called Links that would use observational and imaging spacecraft to address questions about global solar wind energy entry. Both missions would cost around $2 billion over their lifecycle.

If the NASA heliophysics budget remains flat for the next decade, the agency will not be able to afford any new flagship missions, report co-chair Stephen Fuselier said at a presentation of the report at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting on Dec. 11. Only one of the high-priority NASA mission proposals from the 2013 decadal survey, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, would launch.

“That would be very bad for our field, for one flagship mission to occur in 20 years,” Fuselier added. “That will change our field, possibly forever.”

The recommended projects would require the heliophysics budget jump to $1 billion by fiscal year 2026, followed by 8.25% growth per year through the end of the decade. The budget currently stands at $805 million, but NASA has proposed trimming it by 2% in fiscal year 2025.

“This is a realistically achievable science and strategy,” report co-chair Robyn Millan said at the AGU report presentation. “These kinds of increases have happened in the past at NASA when there was high-priority, important science to be done.”

In the report, the survey committee strongly endorses the scientific value of GDC, and in a scenario with insufficient funding, they propose delaying newly proposed programs to prioritize the completion of GDC and DYNAMIC.

GDC and DYNAMIC would also be the first step in enabling Links and other heterogeneous constellation missions, Heliophysics Division Director Joseph Westlake said at the AGU meeting.

GDC project scientist Douglas Rowland reported at the meeting that NASA delivered a plan to Congress to launch the mission in 2032. All six of the mission’s instruments are poised to have preliminary design reviews and begin spacecraft development in 2025 and early 2026, Rowland said.

“We’re doing everything we can to be ready the moment that the check arrives,” Rowland added.

The report includes decision rules outlining which projects should be delayed, and in what order, if funding shortfalls occur. For NASA, the rules prioritize immediate support for GDC and DYNAMIC followed by increasing the Heliophysics Research Program budget to maintain a proposal acceptance rate around 25% and increase grant sizes to account for inflation and open science requirements.

The decision rules then prioritize a flagship community science modeling program, followed by the next Explorer/Mission of Opportunity science mission, increases for the Space Weather program budget, the Links reference mission, and the Solar Polar Orbiter missions, in that order.

Ground-based infrastructure for NSF

The decadal proposes an enhanced Next Generation Global Oscillations Network Group to replace the current GONG, a solar observatory network that studies the Sun’s interior by analyzing the sound waves traveling through it. The report calls GONG, which was deployed almost 30 years ago, “aging infrastructure that is difficult to maintain and operate.”

ngGONG would expand upon GONG’s capabilities by studying the solar magnetic dynamo and mapping solar activity on the Sun’s far side. It would be the first ground-based network to include operational space weather requirements from its conception. The report states that ngGONG would require a $238 million budget increase for NSF and partnerships with NOAA, the Air Force, and international organizations.

The other two major NSF infrastructure projects recommended in the survey are the Frequency-Agile Solar Radio (FASR) and the Distributed Arrays of Small Heterogeneous Instruments (DASHI), which previous decadal surveys also identified as high priorities.

FASR would contribute to basic research by taking measurements of plasma processes in the Sun’s atmosphere. The 2024 decadal recommends FASR be categorized as an MSRI-2 project, which would mean a budget between $20 million and $100 million.

DASHI would observe key state parameters of Earth’s upper atmosphere, important for both basic research and space weather predictions. The report recommends refining the DASHI concept through an MSRI-1 project, which have budgets of less than $20 million. The project would fund simulation experiment modeling studies to determine the optimal number of observing stations along with their location and instrumentation.

Space weather missions and prediction

The report recommends enhancements to space weather programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in part to focus more on the safety of humans and infrastructure in space.

For NASA, the report calls for a more than $191 million increase for its Space Weather program to fund multiple spaceflight missions and demonstration instruments for data collection. It also recommends NASA consider sending space weather instruments on all its missions and look for opportunities to add such instruments to other agency missions or commercial spacecraft.

The decadal also recommends $125 million for NOAA to develop large-scale predictive weather models in partnership with the Department of Defense that focus on user needs. For example, the report says the increased presence of humans in outer space necessitates immediate and accurate modeling of the radiation environment. These models would incorporate more of the available data than current models can handle and take advantage of machine learning methods.

State of the profession

The decadal recommends creating a consortium to gather demographic data on the solar and space physics workforce and determine a standardized name for the field. Various organizations use different terms to describe similar work in the field and the report argues that establishing a single, universal name would aid data gathering, recruitment, and public outreach efforts.

The report attempts to break down the demographics of the solar and space physics field but concludes that such data is incomplete. NASA proposal submission data shows that women submitted between 16% and 21% of heliophysics proposals between 2014 and 2020, while men submitted 67% to 71% over the same period (the rest of the respondents selected “prefer not to answer”). That data also shows an increasing share of proposals submitted by Asian researchers, little change for Hispanic researchers, and that the share of submissions by Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, and multiracial researchers remains below 1%.

The report recommends agencies be proactive about enhancing DEIA+, which it defines as diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as well as anti-racism, accountability, and justice. This includes requiring DEIA+ plans for proposals over $1 million, making supplemental funding available for optional DEIA+ activities, and improving the quality of proposed DEIA+ plans by providing successful examples to the community and having expert panels review plans associated with large proposals.

NSF and NASA should also incentivize the development of solar and space science educational materials for K-12 and college students by expanding the definition of “broader impacts” in grant funding to include these materials, the report argues. It also recommends NSF offer more frequent opportunities in its Faculty Development in geoSpace Sciences program to expand solar and space physics to more and different types of universities and increase funding opportunities for researchers to lead solar and space physics summer schools and workshops for undergraduate and graduate students.

Finally, the report recommends further action to bring solar and space physics to the general public, such as agencies more widely disseminating research results and their societal impacts and NASA and NSF engaging in more outreach regarding their missions and facilities. It also encourages involving the public directly in scientific discovery, citing previous NASA-funded citizen science projects as examples of successes.