Four compact satellites of NASA’s PUNCH mission are prepping for a shared launch with the SPHEREx space telescope on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Their goal is to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere and its evolution into solar wind, promising to expand our knowledge of space phenomena.
Arrival and Preparation
NASA’s four small PUNCH satellites arrived on January 18, at Astrotech Space Operations, located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. They are now undergoing final preparations for their upcoming launch.
The PUNCH mission, short for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, will share its journey to space with NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope. SPHEREx, which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than the end of February. Both missions will travel aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
As part of final tests and checkouts, teams will test the solar arrays on each small satellite before they are mated to SPHEREx in preparation for encapsulation in Falcon 9’s payload fairings.
Mission Objectives and Collaboration
The PUNCH mission will deploy four suitcase-sized satellites to observe the Sun and space with a combined field of view. Working together, the four PUNCH satellites will map out the region where the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, transitions to the solar wind, the constant outflow of material from the Sun.
PUNCH 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.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the launch service for the missions.
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