Living With a Star (LWS) is a NASA scientific program to study those aspects of the connected Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.

LWS is a crosscutting initiative with goals and objectives relevant to NASA's Exploration Initiative, as well as to NASA's Strategic Enterprises. The program is managed by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. 

LWS is composed of three major components: Scientific investigations on spaceflight platforms study different regions of the Sun, interplanetary space, and geospace; an applied science program Space Environment Testbeds where protocols and components are tested; and a Targeted Research and Technology Program.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a NASA mission which will observe the Sun for over five years.

Launched on February 11, 2010, the observatory is part of the Living With a Star (LWS) program. The goal of the LWS program is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to effectively address those aspects of the connected Sun–Earth system directly affecting life and society. The goal of the SDO is to understand the influence of the Sun on the Earth and near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously. SDO has been investigating how the Sun's magnetic field is generated and structured, how this stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance.

Himawari or Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS), was a series of Japanese weather satellites operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The first GMS satellite was launched 14 July 1977 from Cape Canaveral. The fifth and final satellite was launched 18 March 1995 from Tanegashima. The satellites were replaced by the Multifunctional Transport Satellite series.

Omid was Iran's first domestically made satellite.

Omid is a data-processing satellite for research and telecommunications, Iran's state television reported that it was successfully launched on 2 February 2009. After being launched by an Iranian-made carrier rocket, Safir 2, the satellite was placed into a low Earth orbit. 

Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a planned Sun-observing satellite, under development by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The main mission scenario is a launch by a NASA EELV or an Atlas V from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in January 2017. SolO is intended to perform detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and nascent solar wind, and perform close observations of the polar regions of the Sun, which is difficult to do from Earth, both serving to answer the question 'How does the Sun create and control the heliosphere?'. The Solar Orbiter will make observations of the Sun from an eccentric orbit.

InSight is a Mars lander mission planned by NASA for launch in 2016. The name stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.

The mission's objective is to place a stationary lander equipped with a seismometer and heat flow probe on the surface of Mars to study its early geological evolution. This would bring new understanding of the Solar System's terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars — and Earth's Moon. By reusing technology from the Mars Phoenix lander, which successfully landed on Mars in 2008, it is expected that the cost and risk will be reduced.

InSight was initially known as GEMS (Geophysical Monitoring Station), but changed its name in early 2012 at the request of NASA. 

Micro Aerospace Solutions is an American company specialized in space software systems.

At Micro Aerospace Solutions we specialize in thruster design, propulsion systems, attitude control, command and data handling, and computer and communications systems for small spacecraft and nanosatellites. We also offer spacecraft and system testing, data collection, and research for new projects or ideas. We have experience with electrical system circuit board design, layouts for microcontroller systems, environmental control, navigation and tracking, imaging systems, scientific sensors, and display systems. Our background in aerospace systems allows us to understand low-power and high-efficiency designs with tight tolerance requirements.

L’Garde Inc aims to be a world leader in the development of inflatable and deployable structures for terrestrial and space applications.  

L’Garde was founded in 1971 in Orange County, CA to support ballistic missile defense through the development and manufacture of inflatable targets and decoy systems.  Since that time L’Garde has developed a wealth of knowledge about deployable space systems that include:

• targets and countermeasures,
• deployable space antennas,
• in-space propulsion,
• deployable space structures,
• and deployable terrestrial systems.

Sunjammer is a solar sail constructed by LGarde for NASA.

It is the largest solar sail to be constructed as of 2013. Sunjammer is slated to launch in November 2014 as the secondary payload of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, along with the Earth observation satellite DSCOVR.

Sunjammer was named after a 1964 Arthur C. Clarke story of the same name, in which several solar sails compete in a race across the Solar System.

The Sunrise project is a balloon-borne solar observatory. It consists of a 1m aperture Gregory telescope, a UV filter imager, an imaging vector polarimeter, an image stabilization system and further infrastructure.

The SUNRISE project aims at high-resolution spectro-polarimetric observations of the solar atmosphere on the intrinsic spatial scale of its magnetic structure. The SUNRISE telescope with 1 m aperture and its instruments will provide spectra and images resolving spatial scales down to 35 km on the Sun. The main scientific goal of the mission is to understand the formation of magnetic structures in the solar atmosphere and to study their interaction with the convective plasma flows. The first science flight of Sunrise yielded high-quality data that reveal the structure, dynamics and evolution of solar convection, oscillations and magnetic fields at a resolution of around 100 km in the quiet Sun.