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 Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Living With a Star was proposed in 2000 and established with funding in the fall of 2001. An international collaboration was additionally sought, known as the International Living With a Star program, conducted through the Interagency Consultative Group (IACG). After the dedicated IACG "Task Group" concluded meetings with its recommendation, ILWS was formed in 2002.[1]
LWS also maintains the Targeted Research & Technology program.[2]
Science requirements and conceptual mission implementation have been defined for the Geospace Dynamics Coupling (GDC) spacecraft constellation, the formerly proposed Solar Sentinels, as well as other future missions under development or consideration.
Space Environment Testbeds
SET uses existing data and new data from low-cost missions to achieve the following:
Define the mechanisms for induced space environment and effects;
reduce uncertainties in the definitions of the induced environment and effects on spacecraft and their payloads; and to
improve design and operations guidelines and test protocols so that spacecraft anomalies and failures due to environmental effects during operations are reduced.
The goal of this mission is to understand the nature of the environment of space and how that environment impacts spacecraft.[6]
Targeted Research and Technology
With the 2001 inception of the LWS Program, new opportunities were created for a systematic, goal-oriented research program targeting those aspects of the Sun-Earth system that affect life and society. To provide immediate progress toward achieving the LWS goals, the Targeted Research and Technology (TR&T) component of the program was developed.[2] The TR&T element has solicited five rounds of proposals seeking quantitative understanding and predictive capability throughout the system. TR&T has funded independent research awards, focused science topic panels, and strategic capability challenges to enable a cross-disciplinary, integrated, system-wide understanding of how the Sun varies, and how Earth and planets respond. The focused science topic panels are a novel approach to collaborative science, and initial results appear promising.
Missions
The following missions are associated with the Living With a Star program, with launch dates indicated.[7]