all right so it is my pleasure to talk to you about NASA's Heliophysics
division which is everything under the Sun, we like we like our acronyms we like
our single words so we we came up with Heliophysics to really mean everything
that the Sun controls everything that it looks after and everything that it
impacts, so it impacts all the way from the very very close into the Sun all the
way out to the very edge of our solar system as it actually shapes the very
cavity that our solar system orbits around the Milky Way in and so we have a
fleet of spacecraft in the Heliophysics division that actually, oops,
yes but actually study that we have a lot of spacecraft that are very close to
the Earth they're looking at the ionosphere, thermosphere system we move
out we cover the magnetosphere as we move further outside we can see our
solar observatories that watch the Sun 24/7 you can see SOHO, Wind and ACE that
are monitoring everything that is coming from the Sun in the solar wind and then
if we move a little further out as we move away from Earth and we passed by
the planet they or the orbit of Venus and Mercury then you'll see the very
plucky Parker Solar Probe that is orbiting the Sun in very large petal
orbits launched last year and already bringing great science results we've
seen papers in nature and incredible science results presented here today and
then going if we go even further out all the way out beyond Pluto to the very
edge of our Heliosphere Voyager spacecraft that have been on on orbit or
in space for now 42 years still sending back vital information to us about our
very edge of space and in fact now interstellar space having crossed for
the very first time out of the the sort of influence of our solar wind but very
close to home we love our Sun it not only is it the Sun that that we we have
to live with and it has big impacts on us but it's actually a star it's the
only star right now that we can actually go and visit and so we go in and we
study all of the the wonderful things that our star does
we've looked at the Sun in just about every different wavelength possible
we've been in as close as the planet Mercury but not until last year when we
launched Parker Solar Probe will be able to really go into this magic region in
this region where all of the action happens and you look at the Sun in
visible it looks like a fairly uniform yellow disc you may see a couple of
small blacks dark spots on it that we call sunspots but when you look at the
Sun in any other wavelength you see that it's an incredibly incredibly active
star regularly having events that throw billions of tons of this coronal
material out into space often actually impacting our planet so here is Parker
Solar Probe daring and flying very, very close to the Sun flying through the
Sun's Corona the reason we needed to do this is that we there are mysteries in
the Corona that we have not yet been able to explain one is that hazy
atmosphere that you see during a total solar eclipse is about 300 times hotter
than the surface of the Sun and that just doesn't really make sense also
where we see this incredible heating we also see big acceleration and so the
plasma that would normally be constrained on the magnetic field lines
and held close to the Sun it's a big giant star it's got a big gravitational
pole but despite that this material can actually be accelerated and move away
from the Sun bathing all of the planets and indeed shaping our Heliosphere so
we've had wonderful results from Parker's Solar Probe here at the meeting
this is sort of a view of what Parker's Solar Probe is seeing during the first
orbit and so you can see how big the Sun actually looks that gives you an idea of
how close parker Solar Probe is to the Sun in the current configuration she's
about 15 point eight million miles away from the Sun we will do a second
Venus flyby in December, December 26 of this year and she will go to a smaller
configuration and then her closest approach will be about 12 million miles
away from the surface of the Sun so here's his data from the WISPR
camera this is one of the the instruments aboard Parker Solar Probe
this image it doesn't take it's not a traditional solar imager it doesn't take
pictures of the Sun but it's taking pictures of the solar wind and all of
the structures that the spacecraft is about to fly through it's extremely
important for us because we're now in a in a region where we've never been
before and so we're having these incredible data these these new results
and it's really helping to be able to explain what we're seeing because we can
look at the structures and the type of solar wind that we're flying through one
of the big results that was published in nature last week was actually what we're
calling switchbacks and so if you look at the magnetic field here this is a
magnetic field line moving away from the Sun we would expect that magnetic field
line to be straight but actually what we see is are these sort of s-shaped curves
that we calling switchbacks and if you think of a magnetic field line a bit
like a rubber rope it's extremely hard to get it to bend back and do this
strange configuration so there is some kind of wave structure that is going on
in the corona that is causing these s shapes to occur and as those s shapes
relax they're letting an awful lot of energy out into the solar wind and so we
think this is definitely one of the mechanisms that we're now seeing that is
causing this heating and acceleration of the solar wind so even on the very first
orbit of Parker Solar Probe we're already getting results for our
overarching questions of why is that corona so hot and why is the solar wind
continually accelerated, so when the when the solar wind, so when the Sun is very
active we it will throw off these very large events also as I mentioned
continually flowing not just when we see these large events but this solar wind
is continually flowing so it's continually sending these huge streams
of particles out into interstellar space so as as it leaves the Sun these
particles will come and first of all they wrap around any of the planets that
are that you know between the Sun and us and so I think
you'll see the first thing as it goes past the planet Mercury and then on to
the planet Venus and then it's kind of a strange feeling I feel like it's coming
up to get me from behind but there's so it's going to go around
the planet Venus Venus doesn't have a particularly strong magnetic field so it
doesn't have a huge impact when it gets to Venus but you'll see the difference
when those particles get to earth Earth has a very strong magnetic field and so
that though our magnetic field will actually repel a lot of those particles
that guides them around our magnetic environment our magnetosphere keeping
most of that really dangerous radiation out and so you can see the way they get
sort of channeled around of course some of the per some of the energy gets in
just because we keep the the dangerous particles out we can actually get a lot
of energy from the solar wind coming in and causing big configurations big
changes in our magnetic field and those changes in the magnetic field actually
give rise to the very beautiful Northern lights Northern and Southern lights I
should say and so as all this energy comes into the magnetosphere as the
magnetosphere kind of relaxes these particles come shooting down the field
lines they impact the ionosphere and they impact the gases that we find in
the ionosphere so mostly that is oxygen and nitrogen and they cause it to glow
so that the colors that you see in the aurora a fingerprint of what what gas is
actually glowing so where you see green that is an oxygen line if you see blue
or red it is typically nitrogen ik red can also be oxygen too but this is a
nice shot this is actually the Aurora Australis as the the space station goes
over the southern hemisphere taking beautiful images of the Aurora and also
some air glow so whenever we see big events not only do we see the Aurora
which has definite impacts for power grids but we can also see our radiation
belts so the Earth is encircled by two belts of there
very intense radiation when we have these really big storms these belts can
pump up both in energy and also in size which means the spacecraft that are not
designed and do not expect to be in the radiation belts can suddenly find
themselves engulfed by these huge, huge radiation storms we had we had the Van
Allen probes that recently we had to say goodbye to our Van Allen probes because
they ran out of fuel but we've had seven years of incredible data from those two
spacecraft that have lived and worked in this region of incredible dangerous
radiation and so that's another so we have the Aurora we also have the
radiation belts and then if we come down just a little bit further we also see
impacts in the ionosphere system so where you would expect radio waves to
kind of bounce off or even travel through as we use our GPS signals we see
a lot of these storms that cause kind of bubbles in that region which can stop
the radio signals passing through them and so we see every single piece of
technology almost that you can imagine is is clearly impacted by space weather
and so it's impacted by the solar wind and its effect on our planet and so of
course we worry about our technology we worry about our spacecraft we worry
about the space station we have passenger passenger planes that fly
across the polar routes they can be affected when you get large amounts of
radiation coming in it can also stop communication for the polar routes for
the ships as they're going across there but most importantly for us here at NASA
it can cause problems for our astronauts safety and so as we as we stand ready to
support the Artemis program the number one thing of course for us is to protect
our astronauts and the way we do that is by making these measurements with the
heliophysics fleet to really understand what is happening with the solar wind
and how that is going to impact our astronauts particularly with Artemis
we're not just going to have very short excursions up to the moon and back but
we're getting ready to do extended presence in space and so we'll be out in
the pristine solar wind and so it makes our job in heliophysics
just that bit more important and a bit more challenging as we now have to be
able to predict what is going to come from the Sun and impact our astronauts
and then the final thing of course we do in Heliophysics not only do we we worry
about everything that happens here at earth we worry about everything that
happens throughout the entire Solar System the the solar wind beats all of
the planets it's still there at Pluto it continues beyond and further and further
and then at the very edge sort of runs out of steam if you like it slows down
and it meets interstellar space and there is a boundary between the solar
wind and interstellar space that is continually moving and it kind of
breathes with a solar system and so at solar maximum the the boundary is
further away at solar minimum it kind of breathes in and so we have a very brave
Voyager spacecraft that have actually left the heliosphere they are out in
interstellar space we also have the IBEX mission which is taking images of the
particles that are out in this boundary region and we're also getting ready in a
couple of years to launch a follow-on mission called IMAP that will really do
a great job of doing sort of high-resolution maps of that outer
boundary of space and so I will leave you with with my Heliophysics logo it is
a great time to be a Helio physicist we have made an awful lot of new selections
we're bringing a lot of new missions into our fleet and we are we are really
enjoying the tremendous results the tremendous data that we're getting of
course Parker Solar Probe with all the new data we also this year launched ICON
which is a mission that is looking at kind of the interplay with terrestrial
weather so storms and hurricanes and tornados from below and how they
actually impact with the space weather coming in from above there's a very
fragile region that aware these two systems are actually working together so
it's a really nice interaction for us with Earth science and that's yet
another new mission that we have and so all of the data that we take in
Heliophysics is really driven by the solar wind and
therefore we send we're very excited to support the Artemis mission and as we as
we lean forward and we go forward to the moon to the Mars and beyond the Heliophysics
Division stands ready to support the mission thank you very much