Credit: Courtesy of SwRI
NASA’s PUNCH mission will use four suitcase-sized satellites, designed and built by SwRI, spread out around Earth and synchronized to serve as a single “virtual” instrument 8,000 miles across. Illustration is not to scale.
As NASA prepares to launch SPHEREx, another groundbreaking mission led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is set to hitch a ride. The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH, mission consists of four small, suitcase-sized spacecraft designed and built by SwRI. While SPHEREx embarks on a quest to map the universe and search for the building blocks of life, PUNCH will focus closer to home, studying the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) and the solar wind that permeates our solar system. It is scheduled to launch on March 2 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, sharing a SpaceX Falcon 9 with NASA’s SPHEREx observatory.
This collaborative launch highlights NASA’s Small Explorers (SMEX) program’s commitment to providing frequent flight opportunities for diverse scientific investigations. Following the launch, the PUNCH constellation will spread out in a low-Earth orbit, maintaining constant sunlight and a clear view in all directions. Through a clever configuration of four synchronized spacecraft, PUNCH will effectively create a virtual instrument 8,000 miles wide, capable of imaging a quarter of the sky centered on the Sun.
One of the PUNCH satellites carries a coronagraph, the Narrow Field Imager developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which continuously images the Sun’s corona. The other three carry SwRI-developed Wide Field Imagers, designed to capture the faint outermost portion of the solar corona and wind. According to Dr. DeForest, state-of-the-art imagers will “make the invisible visible“ by filtering out sunlight and background starfields to reveal the subtle glimmer of the solar wind.
Beyond fundamental research, PUNCH has the potential to improve space weather forecasting significantly. By capturing three-dimensional images of coronal mass ejections as they travel through the inner solar system, PUNCH will provide crucial insights into their trajectory and speed, enabling more accurate predictions of how these space storms might impact Earth and our space-faring infrastructure.
While SPHEREx explores the vastness of the cosmos, PUNCH will focus on understanding the dynamic environment closer to home. Both missions contribute valuable pieces to the puzzle of the universe and our place within it. NASA’s partnership with SwRI, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and RAL Space exemplifies the collaborative spirit driving scientific progress as these two distinct missions embark on a journey to expand our knowledge of the cosmos and our solar system.
