In 2010, NASA and the National Science Foundation asked the National Research Council to assemble a committee of experts to develop an integrated national strategy that would guide agency investments in solar and space physics for the years 2013-2022. That strategy, the result of nearly 2 years of effort by the survey committee, which worked with more than 100 scientists and engineers on eight supporting study panels, is presented in the 2013 publication, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society. This booklet, designed to be accessible to a broader audience of policymakers and the interested public, summarizes the content of that report.

This volume, The Sun to the Earth-and Beyond: Panel Reports, is a compilation of the reports from five National Research Council (NRC) panels convened as part of a survey in solar and space physics for the period 2003-2013. The NRC's Space Studies Board and its Committee on Solar and Space Physics organized the study. Overall direction for the survey was provided by the Solar and Space Physics Survey Committee, whose report, The Sun to the Earth-and Beyond: A Decadal Research Strategy in Solar and Space Physics, was delivered to the study sponsors in prepublication format in August 2002. The final version of that report was published in June 2003. The panel reports provide both a detailed rationale for the survey committee's recommendations and an expansive view of the numerous opportunities that exist for a robust program of exploration in solar and space physics.