PUNCH Satellites Test Operations at Vandenberg Space Force Base

Released Friday, January 24, 2025

ID: 14770

- 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.

Technicians use an overheard crane to lift NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) spacecraft onto a work stand for testing operations at the Astrotech Processing Facility on Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025.

Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Antonio Ram

Technicians conduct testing operations on NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) spacecraft onto a work stand for testing operations at the Astrotech Processing Facility on Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025.

Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Antonio Ram