Displaying items by tag: LWS program

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.