Progress in the Exploration of Thermosphere / Ionosphere Coupling: Accomplishments, Frontiers and Challenges

In this paper we review some of the things that we have learned about the response of the thermosphere and ionosphere during disturbed and undisturbed conditions. We will provide a very brief overview of what the far ultraviolet measurements (such as those from GUVI and SSUSI) mean and how the data and data products can be accessed. The goal of that overview is to generate future collaborative activities. We will show: 1) the results of our work on the evolution of thermospheric "storm fronts" as imaged in changes in composition (the O/N2 ratio) and how that response varies with longitude, hemisphere and solar cycle 2) the large scale structure of the nightside F-region ionosphere and the variation with longitude 3) the distribution of ionospheric bubbles and what we can learn from the tomographic inversion of those bubbles. As powerful as UV remote sensing from low Earth orbit (it is only from LEO that we can perform tomographic reconstruction of the 3D structure of bubbles from a single platform), there are many other important measurements that can help address how the system is coupled. This talk will introduce a few of those problems. We will highlight some of the data sources we'd like to develop and the tools and partnerships we'd like to see enhanced and the challenges that face our community in the next few years - especially in the context of the Decadal Survey report.