PUNCH stands for
Polarimeter Unify the Corona and Heliosphere.
The corona is the outer atmosphere of the sun.
It's the part of the sun that you get to see during a total
solar eclipse, where the moon blocks out the main body of the sun.
PUNCH makes artificial eclipses all the time, so that we can see that
corona as it turns into the solar wind and fills our solar system
with material.
The solar wind is important to study because it's the way
that the sun sends out material out into our solar system.
It's constantly bombarding
all of the planets, including Earth and Earth's magnetic field.
And it's very important to understand, because of space weather,
the big solar storms that have to propagate through the solar wind,
and they impact our astronauts
and Earth's magnetic field and cause effects like the aurora
Parker Solar Probe is so
cool because it's flying through the outer parts of the corona right
now, measuring that material that's coming off of the sun.
Meanwhile, PUNCH is going to take global images,
seeing how that corona turns into the solar wind and fills our solar system.
So we'll be able to connect the details that Parker Solar Probe sees
with the big picture, the global picture of what's happening
everywhere.
PUNCH is comprised
of four small satellites, their suitcase sized satellites.
Each one has an instrument that together looks at the global picture.
So we have one instrument, the Narrow Field Imager.
It looks pretty close to the sun and really gets that the solar corona,
the atmosphere of the sun.
And then we have three wide field imagers
that because of their orbit, they look in different places of the sky.
And together we piece together the whole global image
of the material coming off of the sun, filling our solar system.
PUNCH is orbiting in a place that we call low Earth orbit.
That means it's
sort of the closest to Earth it can be, while still being in outer space.
And above Earth's atmosphere.
That would, block the light.
The PUNCH ride share
SPHEREx is incredibly exciting for two reasons.
One is practical, and because it is an efficient way
to get up into space and to use the taxpayers money.
The second reason is that both PUNCH and SPHEREx are exploring
the big picture. SPHEREx is exploring the big picture of the cosmos, and PUNCH
is exploring the big picture of the sun and how it fills our solar
system.
PUNCH links
to the Heliophysics System Observatory, which is all of these missions
that we have in heliophysics connecting the sun
and how that material fills the solar system and impacts
Earth and Earth's environment and fills the whole solar system.
So punch provides the global picture that all of those other missions,
we can combine with all of those other missions
to really understand this full connected system between the sun and the Earth.
The sun is in a period of heightened activity.
That means there are more of these
solar storms, these magnetic explosions on the sun,
these magnetic explosions, come outwards and they can impact our satellites.
They can hurt our astronauts.
So they're really important to understand.
PUNCH s going to watch those in three dimensions
and will be able to tell if they're coming towards the earth or going away
from the Earth, or in some other direction in the solar system.
Meanwhile, Parker Solar Probe is sampling some of those solar storms
right after they're formed, right at the beginning in tremendous detail.
And together with PUNCH, we can really understand how they evolve
through the inner solar system.
What I'm so excited
for about PUNCH is that PUNCH sees
not just the global scale and the big solar storms.
It also sees the daily little storms that happen all of the time.
The sun is never quiet.
It is constantly putting out bursts of of magnetic field and material.
And those bursts of magnetic field, the material impact
the Earth and can drive, space weather events like
impacting our radiation belts, impacting our satellites.
And PUNCH is going to see the big storms and the smaller storms
One cool upcoming mission is called EZIE..
EZIE is going to connect the magnetic field of the Earth.
And, during these solar storms, when they impact the Earth,
the connection between the Earth's magnetic field and Earth's ionosphere,
the currents that flow through ionosphere is what EZIE is going to measure.
Now, PUNCH’s noise is the high altitude aurora,
the northern lights and the southern lights
that occurred during these magnetic reconfigurations
and current systems that happen during the solar storm.
So our noise is going to be related to what EZIE is measuring directly.
And we can really work together with them to solve these problems
in heliophysics.
Our viewers can learn more about PUNCH at [nasa.gov/punch] NASA
Dot gov slash punch.