Solar Ring Mission: Building a Panorama of the Sun and Inner-heliosphere

TL;DR

The Solar Ring mission proposes deploying three spacecraft around 1-AU to provide a comprehensive 360-degree view of the Sun and inner heliosphere, enabling unprecedented insights into solar activity and space weather.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-spacecraft configuration with advanced instruments to achieve full-sphere solar observations and study solar phenomena in unprecedented detail.

Findings

Design of a 3-spacecraft constellation at 1-AU with 120° separation.

Capabilities to observe the entire solar surface simultaneously.

Potential to improve understanding of solar cycle and space weather origins.

Abstract

Solar Ring (SOR) is a proposed space science mission to monitor and study the Sun and inner heliosphere from a full 360{\deg} perspective in the ecliptic plane. It will deploy three 120{\deg}-separated spacecraft on the 1-AU orbit. The first spacecraft, S1, locates 30{\deg} upstream of the Earth, the second, S2, 90{\deg} downstream, and the third, S3, completes the configuration. This design with necessary science instruments, e.g., the Doppler-velocity and vector magnetic field imager, wide-angle coronagraph, and in-situ instruments, will allow us to establish many unprecedented capabilities: (1) provide simultaneous Doppler-velocity observations of the whole solar surface to understand the deep interior, (2) provide vector magnetograms of the whole photosphere - the inner boundary of the solar atmosphere and heliosphere, (3) provide the information of the whole lifetime evolution of solar featured structures, and (4) provide the whole view of solar transients and space weather in the inner heliosphere. With these capabilities, Solar Ring mission aims to address outstanding questions about the origin of solar cycle, the origin of solar eruptions and the origin of extreme space weather events. The successful accomplishment of the mission will construct a panorama of the Sun and inner-heliosphere, and therefore advance our understanding of the star and the space environment that holds our life.