For solar and space weather science, 2017 was a major boon to understanding how Coronal Mass Ejections form, travel through space, and affect Earth.  But Earth wasn’t the only planet this year that gave scientists a front row seat to solar storms.  Thanks to the fleet of orbiters and rovers at Mars, the Red Planet provided a host of data for NASA – and by extension SpaceX – that will greatly help refine models for radiation exposure levels and efforts to protect future robotic and human missions to the planet we hope to colonize in the near future.
