  The magnetic activity of the Sun directly impacts the Earth and human life.
Likewise, other stars will have an impact on the habitability of planets
orbiting these host stars. The lack of information on the magnetic field in the
higher atmospheric layers hampers our progress in understanding solar magnetic
activity. Overcoming this limitation would allow us to address four paramount
long-standing questions: (1) How does the magnetic field couple the different
layers of the atmosphere, and how does it transport energy? (2) How does the
magnetic field structure, drive and interact with the plasma in the
chromosphere and upper atmosphere? (3) How does the magnetic field destabilise
the outer solar atmosphere and thus affect the interplanetary environment? (4)
How do magnetic processes accelerate particles to high energies? New
ground-breaking observations are needed to address these science questions. We
suggest a suite of three instruments that far exceed current capabilities in
terms of spatial resolution, light-gathering power, and polarimetric
performance: (a) A large-aperture UV-to-IR telescope of the 1-3 m class aimed
mainly to measure the magnetic field in the chromosphere by combining high
spatial resolution and high sensitivity. (b) An extreme-UV-to-IR coronagraph
that is designed to measure the large-scale magnetic field in the corona with
an aperture of about 40 cm. (c) An extreme-UV imaging polarimeter based on a 30
cm telescope that combines high throughput in the extreme UV with polarimetry
to connect the magnetic measurements of the other two instruments. This mission
to measure the magnetic field will unlock the driver of the dynamics in the
outer solar atmosphere and thereby greatly advance our understanding of the Sun
and the heliosphere.
