Completing a Ground Truth View of the Global Heliosphere: What Does IMAP Tell Us?

Abstract:

Recent and planned advances in heliospheric research promise to provide for the first time a fairly complete picture of the processes that shape the Geospace environment and the Heliospheric envelope that defines the magnetic and plasma neighborhood of the Sun. The upcoming Solar Orbiter and Solar probe Plus missions will vastly extend our knowledge of the inner heliospheric drivers that impact the entire system. However to develop understanding of energy and particle transport that controls the Geospace plasma and radiation envirionment, it is necessary to maintain an accurate monitoring of the plasma and electromagnetic properties of the solar wind near 1 AU. To complete understanding of the Heliosphere we must also extend understanding of energy and plasma transport to regions beyond 1 AU and throughout the Heliosphere. This understanding will complete the connection between the the corona, the 1AU environment and the outer boundaries recently explored by the Voyagers and IBEX. This talk will focus on the linkages between inner heliosphere, the Geospace environment and the outer heliosphere, with an emphasis on what an L1 monitor such as IMAP can provde for the next decade of great discoveries in space physics.