PUNCH Satellites Solar Array Deployment Test

Released Thursday, January 23, 2025

ID: 14768

- Produced by:
- Beth Anthony

NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere, or PUNCH mission, is a constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun's corona to better understand how the mass and energy there becomes the solar wind that fills the solar system.

By imaging the Sun’s corona and the solar wind together, scientists hope to better understand the entire inner heliosphere – Sun, solar wind, and Earth – as a single connected system.

The PUNCH mission is led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in 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.

Crews conduct a solar array deployment test on the spacecraft of NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites at Astrotech Space Operations located on Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025.

Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Alex Valdez