Just hours after this story was published, NASA announced two new missions to monitor the solar wind and solar storms. PUNCH & TRACERS missions to launch by 2022 will do vital “big science” via “small packages,” the space agency stated.

PUNCH will study the sun’s outer atmosphere and track CMEs. TRACERS will monitor Earth’s magnetic field over the “northern cusp,” right where solar storms bully their way in and cause us problems.

“We carefully selected these two missions not only because of the high-class science they can do in their own right, but because they will work well together with the other heliophysics spacecraft advancing NASA’s mission to protect astronauts, space technology and life down here on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

To launch by August 2022.