Abbey Interrante

NASA’s PUNCH Mission Captures First Images of Sun, Space

NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission successfully completed spacecraft commissioning this week, opening its instrument doors to capture “first light”, the mission’s first images of the Sun’s outer atmosphere and the surrounding space. This is the first step in revealing new details of how the solar atmosphere unfolds and streams through the solar system. Now, mission operation teams will continue the commissioning phase for the spacecraft’s instruments.

On April 14, the Narrow Field Imager (NFI) and one of the mission’s three Wide Field Imagers (WFI) opened its instrument doors and captured the first images for the mission. On April 16, the remaining WFIs opened their doors and also started capturing images. The first NFI image shows star fields with the Sun near the center of the image. The image was filtered to emphasize background star fields, which was obscured by zodiacal light, a very faint diffuse glow from dust orbiting the Sun.

Many dim specks of light are visible across a black background. These are stars. In the middle, the Sun is indicated with a yellow cartoon star. A thin green line crosses from the bottom left of the image, up to the center right. Another crosses from the bottom left, up to the top center. It is labeled Pisces. The image is labeled PUNCH/NFI, First Light, 2025-April-14. — The first light image taken on April 14, 2025, by the PUNCH Narrow Field Imager demonstrates that the camera is in focus, working properly, and able to capture deep-field images of the solar corona against the glare of the Sun. This image has been filtered to highlight the stars that are visible through the far brighter “F corona” (also called zodiacal light) that surrounds the Sun. The instrument is not yet fully aligned with the Sun, leading to bright glints of sunlight, which are visible to the right of the Sun’s location on the image.
Credits: NASA/SwRI/NRL

Throughout the commissioning phase, scientists will be calibrating this view to better reveal details the Sun’s corona, or wispy outer atmosphere. This calibration process will remove about 99% of the light from the corona, enabling scientists to track the faint threads of solar material as they flow outward throughout space.

The WFI image below, taken April 14, shows the wide field of view from WFI and is marked with labeled constellations. As commissioning progresses, the PUNCH team will be removing the star fields and other background light from all images to highlight the faint stream of solar wind as it travels toward Earth.

The bottom 8th of the image is black. In the middle is a very small cartoon Sun, indicating the Sun. This region is labeled Baffle. Above it, an orange haze fills the image, starting bright and getting fainter as it reaches the top corners. This haze is labeled zodiacal light. Several stars are labeled, circled in green, and constellations are connected with green lines. The image is labeled PUNCH/WFI, First Light, 2025-April-14. — The first light image from the PUNCH Wide Field Imager (WFI) taken on April 14, 2025. This image shows the size of the WFI field using familiar constellations and demonstrates that the camera is in focus, working properly, and able to capture deep-field images. The soft diffuse glow is zodiacal light, composed of microscopic dust particles orbiting the Sun.
Credits: NASA/SwRI

These early images confirm a crucial milestone: the cameras onboard PUNCH’s four satellites are in focus and functioning as designed.

The PUNCH mission will make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.

During this first phase of the commissioning period, the team at mission control at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, worked to assure that the four satellites were functioning correctly and are moving into the proper orbit around Earth and distance from each other to create the PUNCH constellation.

The PUNCH satellites include one NFI and three WFIs. The NFI is a coronagraph, which blocks out the bright light from the Sun to better see details in the Sun’s corona. The WFIs are heliospheric imagers that view the very faint, outermost portion of the solar corona and the solar wind itself. Once the PUNCH satellites reach their targeted alignment, the images from these instruments will be stitched together to create the wide view of the journey of the Sun’s corona and solar wind to Earth.

Once the commissioning is complete, PUNCH will provide the first-ever imagery of the solar wind and coronal mass ejections in polarized light, enabling scientists to discern new information about this activity.

Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, Texas, leads the PUNCH mission and operates the four spacecraft from its facilities in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

By Abbey Interrante
NASA Headquarters, Washington

NASA’s PUNCH Begins Mission to Study Solar Wind

Mission controllers for NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) have received full acquisition of signal from the four small satellites, indicating that they are functioning normally and at full power.

Over a two-year planned mission, PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and how it becomes the solar wind.

Artist's concept of the PUNCH satellites in orbit. — Artist’s concept of the PUNCH satellites in orbit. Credit: NASA

The solar wind and energetic solar events like solar flares and coronal mass ejections can create space weather effects throughout the solar system. These phenomena can have a significant impact on human society and technology, from sparking and intensifying auroras to interfering with satellites or triggering power outages.

The measurements from PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how these potentially disruptive events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate and crucial predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and their impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space.

All four spacecraft are synchronized to serve as a single “virtual instrument” that spans the whole PUNCH constellation. The PUNCH mission will downlink data multiple times a day via ground-based antennas on Earth that are managed by the Swedish Space Corporation. Then, the data will be sent to the mission operations center at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) offices in Boulder, Colorado, which will share it with the science operations center, also at SwRI.

The data will be available to the public at the same time it is available to the science team. All PUNCH data will be published through the Solar Data Analysis Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, ensuring open access to the scientific community and public.

Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, Texas, leads the PUNCH mission and will operate the four spacecraft from its facilities in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA Goddard for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Join the online conversation and get mission updates from these accounts:

X: @NASA, @NASAJPL, @NASAUniverse, @NASASun, @NASAKennedy, @NASA_LSP 
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For more information about the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/punch/

This concludes NASA’s live launch coverage.

NASA’s PUNCH Mission Nears Launch

Earth is immersed in material streaming from the Sun. This stream, called the solar wind, is washing over our planet, causing breathtaking auroras, impacting satellites and astronauts in space, and even affecting ground-based infrastructure.

NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission will be the first to image the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and solar wind together to better understand the Sun, solar wind, and Earth as a single connected system.

Launching no earlier than Feb. 28, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, PUNCH will provide scientists with new information about how potentially disruptive solar events form and evolve. This could lead to more accurate predictions about the arrival of space weather events at Earth and impact on humanity’s robotic explorers in space.

The PUNCH mission’s four suitcase-sized satellites have overlapping fields of view that combine to cover a larger swath of sky than any previous mission focused on the corona and solar wind. The satellites will spread out in low Earth orbit to construct a global view of the solar corona and its transition to the solar wind. They will also track solar storms like coronal mass ejections. Their Sun-synchronous orbit will enable them to see the Sun 24/7, with their view only occasionally blocked by Earth.

Following a 90-day commission period after launch, PUNCH is scheduled to conduct science for at least two years. The mission is launching as a rideshare with NASA’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer).

The PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s offices in San Antonio, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Learn more: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasas-punch-mission-to-revolutionize-view-of-solar-wind/

NASA’s PUNCH Mission Targeting Launch in Late February 2025

NASA and SpaceX are targeting late February 2025 for the launch of NASA’s PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites heading to low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become the solar wind. The mission is led by the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

PUNCH is launching as a secondary payload with the agency’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer).

Learn more: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spherex/2024/12/09/nasa-eyes-launching-spherex-sky-mapping-mission-in-early-2025/

PUNCH Announces Rideshare with SPHEREx and New Launch Date

Editor’s Note: As of October 2024, the current launch timeline for the PUNCH mission is no later than April 2025. For the latest information about PUNCH’s launch, please visit science.nasa.gov/mission/punch.

NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will share a ride to space with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission. The missions will launch no earlier than April 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9.

“It’s great to have a definite launch date and vehicle, and we’re looking forward to working with the SPHEREx team as we `carpool’ to orbit,” said Craig DeForest, PUNCH principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Rideshares are a great way to save money by taking better advantage of each rocket’s capability.”

A red Sun shoots off a coronal mass ejection. Below the ejection, Earth is shown to scale. This shows that the coronal mass ejection is many times larger than the Earth. — In this image, Earth is shown to scale with a coronal mass ejection that occurred on August 31, 2012. While Earth’s size is shown to scale, its distance is not (Earth is much farther from the Sun than shown here). Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The contract with SpaceX was updated to include PUNCH and was awarded July 14, 2022. The PUNCH team was able to adjust its schedule to meet the new launch date of no earlier than April 2025 and used this new schedule flexibility to mitigate some schedule constraints due to supply chain challenges.

PUNCH, which consists of four suitcase-sized satellites, will focus on the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) and how it generates the solar wind. The spacecraft also will track coronal mass ejections – large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth – to better understand their evolution and develop new techniques for predicting such eruptions.

The four satellites will spread out around Earth along the day-night line, which enables it to create a continuous, complete, view of the corona and inner solar system. Three of the PUNCH satellites will carry identical Wide Field Imagers, which, together, image the corona and solar wind over a 90-degree field of view (out to 45 degrees away from the Sun). In skywatching terms, 90 degrees covers the part of the sky from the horizon to the point directly overhead. The fourth PUNCH satellite carries a Narrow Field Imager coronagraph, which will study regions closest to the Sun. All four cameras will be synchronized in flight, so that the mission science team can combine their images seamlessly into a single large field of view.

PUNCH is led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in Boulder, Colorado. The mission is managed by Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which is managed by Goddard for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Southwest Research Institute will build the Wide Field Imagers and will build and operate PUNCH. The Naval Research Laboratory in Washington will build the Narrow Field Imagers and provide optical testing. RAL Space in the United Kingdom will provide detectors and calibration for the mission.

By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.