Over the past few centuries, our awareness of the couplings between the Sun's variability and the Earth's environment, and perhaps even its climate, has been advancing at an ever increasing rate. The Sun is a magnetically variable star and, for planets with intrinsic magnetic fields, planets with atmospheres, or planets like Earth with both, there are profound consequences and impacts. Today, the successful increase in knowledge of the workings of the Sun's magnetic activity, the recognition of the many physical processes that couple the realm of the Sun to our galaxy, and the insights into the interaction of the solar wind and radiation with the Earth's magnetic field, atmosphere, and climate system have tended to differentiate and insularize the solar, heliospheric, and geospace sub-disciplines of the physics of the local cosmos. In 2001, the NASA Living With a Star (LWS) program was initiated to reverse that trend.

The recognition that there are many connections within the Sun–Earth systems approach has led to the development of an integrated strategic mission plan and a comprehensive research program encompassing all branches of solar, heliospheric, and space physics, and aeronomy. In doing so, we have developed an interdisciplinary community to address this program. This has raised awareness and appreciation of the research priorities and challenges among the LWS scientists and has led to observational and modeling capabilities that span traditional discipline boundaries.