Understanding the magnetic field of the Sun is central to predicting solar eruptions, understanding the heliosphere, and assessing space-weather hazards throughout the solar system. Current solar magnetographs are limited by the aperture sizes that can be launched on a single spacecraft, restricting spatial resolution and sensitivity. This disruptive technology introduces a fundamentally new approach: interferometric solar spectropolarimetric measurements are combined through computational imaging techniques to synthesize the resolving power of a much larger telescope for a fraction of mass (and cost) of conventional (heavy) space-based magnetographs.

This technology leverages photonic integrated circuits, multi-aperture design with polarization, and advanced image reconstruction algorithms to recover high-resolution spectropolarimetric observations of the solar photosphere and chromosphere while significantly reducing mass, volume, and cost. The concept enables scalable architectures in which angular resolution can be including longer baselines for the aperture synthesis, opening a pathway toward sub-arcsecond and ultimately unprecedented magnetic-field measurements from space.

Future observations with this instrumentation would address key science questions in solar and heliophysics research, including the formation and evolution of active regions, magnetic flux emergence and decay, flare and coronal mass ejection initiation, magnetic energy storage and release, the solar dynamo and other helioseismology problems, and the coupling of the solar atmosphere across multiple spatial scales. Thanks to the low mass and cost, multi-satellite constellation missions with such instruments could also provide simultaneous multi-vantage measurements of solar magnetic fields and Doppler velocities across photosphere and chromosphere, enabling stereoscopic constraints on three-dimensional magnetic structures, helioseismic inversions of the solar internal rotation, and improved data-driven models of the solar corona and heliosphere for the prediction of imminent eruptive flares. By combining interferometric imaging with low-mass multi-spacecraft constellations, this technology presents a transformative capability for future solar magnetic-field measurements and space-weather forecasting.