The state of art before SHARP resembled a puzzle which consisted of a number of disconnected assembled parts. For example, the structure of low-Mach number shocks was deduced from the observations at the Earth bow shock, but the theory has not been verified at other planetary shocks. Certain features of high-Mach number shocks have been deduced from observations, but no theory existed which would explain the features and their dependence on the Mach number. Certain understanding of the very high Mach shock physics, as inferred from remote observations of supernova remnants shocks, and in situ observations of heliosperic shocks were poorly connected. On the other hand, the amount of the available data collected in the heliosphere and in remote astrophysical observations is well beyond the capabilities of single researchers or even single groups. The research done in SHARP project has successfully validated the theory of low-Mach number shock structure, developed for the terrestrial bow shock, to other low-Mach number shocks. SHARP achieved a big leap in understanding the shock structure and particle energization in shocks, by extending theory to high-Mach shocks, thus building a bridge connecting the heliospheric and astrophysical shocks. The shock database is developed and filled with the data on shocks in a wide range of parameters. The shock database significantly contributes to the “exploitation of space data sets collected by European and international missions”. The database consists of thousands of terrestrial and non-terrestrial shock crossings. Thus, this exploits existing datasets and is expected to facilitate numerous new studies of collisionless shocks both of a statistical nature as well as detailed case studies.
