Talk:geospace

The following terms have become somewhat controversial. NASA likes to use the term "heliophysics" to describe the topic of space physics within the context of the solar system (as oppsed to in the context of astronomy and astrophysics), despite the fact that the etymology of the word would indicate it only refers to the sun. Thus the NASA term heliophysics encompasses solar physics (from the interior of the sun to the coronoa, the solar wind and heliosphere, as well as planetary magnetospheres and ionospheres. The U.S. National Science Foundation uses the term "geospace" to include not only Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere but also the mesosphere, thermosphere, magnetosheath, solar wind, and solar atmosphere. Bakerkb1 19:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)