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Understand the Sun and its Effects on Earth and the Solar System
Human life is linked to the behavior of the Sun. Changes in the Sun's long-term brightness cause ice ages, and the 11-year solar cycle of activity causes powerful flares and coronal mass ejections that impact Earth, disrupt telecommunications and navigation, threaten astronauts, damage satellites, and disable electric power grids.
As society becomes increasingly dependent on space-based technologies, humankind's vulnerability to space weather becomes more apparent, and the need to understand and mitigate these effects becomes more urgent.
NASA's objective is to understand and predict the causes of space weather by studying the Sun, the heliosphere, and planetary environments as a single connected system.
Research into the nature of solar activity and its effects on the solar system will help safeguard the journeys of robotic and human explorers.
(NASA Strategic Plan 2006, sub-goal 3B)
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